


Cave of Nightmares

by Quarra, xantissa



Series: No Wolves Allowed [9]
Category: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Action, Angst, Blood and Gore, Closure, Creepy, Cuddling & Snuggling, Description of past child torture and death, Don’t copy to another site, Flashbacks, Gen, Gore, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Incest (background), M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Past Non-Con Body Modifications, Spoiler Tags in End Notes, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, dead bodies, morally ambiguous - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 11:38:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17848730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quarra/pseuds/Quarra, https://archiveofourown.org/users/xantissa/pseuds/xantissa
Summary: It was supposed to be a simple errand. Vesemir needed more herbs to supply the keep, so he kicked Eskel out of bed at the crack of dawn to get them.Eskel expected to spend all day sweating his ass off finding rare flowers. He didn’t expect to find an old abandoned cave with the symbol of the Wolf on it.He didn’t expect the disturbing truths that lay inside.





	Cave of Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Notes from Quarra: This fic takes place a few months after [Therapy Witcher](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17416463). You probably should read at least that, plus [No Wolves Allowed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16743112/chapters/39277615) and [Family Intervention](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17358785) to have any idea of what the hell is going on here. 
> 
> **THERE ARE SPOILER TAGS IN THE END NOTES**. This story has a fair bit of horror in it, and if you are worried that you might not be able to take it, check out the end notes for a more thorough description of what you'll find here. It WILL spoil part of the story for you. But, you know, take care of yourself. That's important.
> 
> Also: I’m borrowing heavily from the first game for how potions work. In witcher 1 those bitches lasted, like, days. The simple ones, anyways. More powerful ones lasted a minute or two. That’s the route I’m going with potions here. They have a limited duration; some of that depends on who made it, and some depends on what type of potion it is. Also, I am taking heavy liberties with game canon and how the cave in this story looks. Because as much as I love the witcher games, their geology makes no goddamn sense and I cannot take it. So I am fixing that. And possibly considering sending a letter to CD Projekt to offer my services as a consultant, so their caves in the next game actually follow logic.
> 
> A big, huge, wonderful thanks to RemingtonFae for beta reading for us! THANK YOUUU.

Eskel huffed through the steep path. It was so damn steep and winding that he left his horse a good mile back. Sometimes Vesemir forgot they weren’t kids anymore. 

His foot slipped on loose stones. The wet and muddy earth underneath gave, making him slip down a few paces before he managed to shift his weight enough to stop the mad slide.

Getting woken up before dawn by a grumpy Vesemir demanding he go and refill their herb supplies right this second was irritating at best, infuriating at worst. It wasn’t like Eskel minded helping out; hell, he used the herb stash in the keep as much as Geralt or Lambert. Of course he would help out with the supplies. That didn’t mean he appreciated being ordered around like a lazy kid, though. It didn’t help matters at all that his ribs still ached faintly from that contract for a griffin that turned out to be an archgriffin. 

He’d gotten the common herbs already. White Myrtle and Ginatia petals were easy to find. The Ribleaf and Crow’s Eye were rarer but not that hard. However, Vesemir demanded two pounds of Arenaria flowers among the rarer herbs and mushrooms, and that was not something that was easily found. 

Eskel went west from the keep and then a bit south as he continued to pick the mountain side clean of flowers. He found a good batch of cortinarius mushrooms and even a few allspice roots, but arenarias were proving difficult. He’d been looking for two and a half hours and still had only found maybe two handfuls of them. At this rate it would take him a week to get as much as Vesemir wanted and he didn't really want to go back without them. Vesemir would harp on him for weeks for failing _such a basic task_.

He was pissed off at Lambert’s perfect timing. The witcher had just left the night before and thus wasn’t here now, helping Eskel search for the herbs. Arenaria flowers were used to brew the White Gull, which in turn was used to brew the oils they used for blades, most of their potions, and even was a base for the bombs they created. Lambert easily went through half the stash making his liver killing alcoholic cocktails, though. But then Eskel remembered he helped drink those cocktails and subsided. 

Eskel cursed when he looked up at the ground he just slid down and braced himself to climb back up again. The sack on his back slipped and shifted around, getting caught in the sword scabbards and pulling uncomfortably with every step. He felt more like a pack horse than ever as he grabbed hold of a sturdy sapling and pulled himself up.

Hopefully there would be a damn field of Arenaria bushes somewhere on this mountainside, because at this rate it would take him a week to get as much as Vesemir wanted.

He noticed something that looked suspiciously like Nostrix from a distance and went left, climbing over a few moss covered boulders. Probably remnants of a mudslide some years past, judging by the growth pattern of the surrounding vegetation and the size and type of rock.

Before his feet hit the ground on the other side of the boulders, three things happened. First, he felt his medallion vibrate. Then there was a screech behind him, which was quickly followed by the feel of harpy claws scoring over the back of his neck and shoulder. He cursed, rolling on the ground and probably crushing the herbs he already gathered.

Eskel rolled to his feet, the movement sliding him farther down the slope. Then he pulled out his silver sword, getting another few scratches to his arm. He cut wide, but the feathered menace was already flapping away, back and up, out of the reach of his sword or his signs. Gods, how he hated fighting flying beasties.

There was a crossbow on his back, but he couldn't get to it. The way the sack of herbs tangled and tugged on his weapons harness would make it impossible to draw.

The harpy that attacked him from behind was screeching and circling above, faking lunges every so often, strangely aware of Eskel’s reach. It kept just a hair too far away for him to catch it with his sword. The other one was circling wider, obviously less aggressive and not as sure about attacking him.

He exchanged a few fruitless slashes with the harpy teasing him before he got fed up with the whole song and dance. Glancing around real quick, he grabbed the nearest bit of rock he saw and flung it as hard as he could at the beast. It squeaked and fell, hitting the ground hard just a few feet from him. With one lunge he was there, stabbing his sword right through its chest and into the soft ground under it.

His medallion vibrated again, weakly, and then stopped almost as soon as it started, as if the source of the disturbance was going away. The second harpy screeched, far off and high above him. Then it flapped away after a moment of circling. 

Eskel stayed still and watched it fly away, just in case. The back of his neck itched, and the smell of blood tickled at his nose. It wasn’t a deep scratch, but it would probably leave a scar. As if he needed one more.

He jerked his sword out of the carcass, unreasonably angry at the harpy, and wiped it down before sliding it into the scabbard. Then he got out his hunting knife and knelt down to start cutting off bits. At least he’d be able to get some kind of monetary gratification for all his trouble. Harpy feathers sold pretty well, and the talons more so. 

When he was finished, he looked up and cursed again. Between the sliding and the fighting, he’d lost most of the progress from a good half an hour of climbing and now had to repeat it.

Eskel glanced to the right. Then he did a quick double take, feeling a little startled. The patch of coloring he’d originally took for a bit of darker rock was actually a shadow. There was a ledge curving out around the bend of the rockface. It took some sliding, climbing, and a little more cursing, but he managed to get onto the ledge in front of it.

Only it wasn’t a ledge, he realized as soon as his feet hit the evened ground. It was a road. Old and fallen into disrepair, too. It was overgrown by weeds and a rickety tree clung to the edge for dear life, but it was definitely man made.

Eskel frowned. He thought he knew about all the roads around Kaer Morhen, what with there being just a handful of them. Curiosity ate at him.

Flowers could wait. 

He shouldered his pack as securely as he could and went to see where the path led him. 

It was tricky going. The path was such in name only, and more than once Eskel had to stop and closely examine the area just to make sure he had his footing right. One bad step and he’d go for a tumble down the mountainside, something he wasn’t eager at all to try. 

The track curved around a bend and headed deep into a crevasse in the rock. With the way the trees and the vines clung to the area, Eskel would have never even seen the rock fissure if he wasn’t closely looking for it. 

He unsheathed his steel sword and hacked at the vines, trying to make some space to squeeze through. Once he got enough of them loosened up, he grabbed a handful and yanked the whole damn plant down, ripping the rock face clean of vines.

He stared in astonishment. 

There was a cave back there. Its opening was still partially obscured by the remnants of the vines, but there was definitely enough room for a person to go in. More than one, from the size of it. The sides of the cave almost looked like fallen pillars, natural ones anyways, that steepled up to the peak of the opening.

But more than that, there were markings on the wall of the cave, right at the entrance. He ran his hand over the rough carved groves, feeling the old stone smoothed out by time under his fingertips. Some of the grooves were sanded down to non existence, some had additional cracks distorting them, but he could tell what it was anyway. 

It was the symbol of the Wolf school. 

Eskel looked around quickly, taking in where he was. But nothing changed. This was still a cave, hidden off in the middle of a mountain side. An old, forgotten witcher’s cave. 

Did Vesemir know this was here? If so, why had he never mentioned it?

His medallion was vibrating again, a low and steady thrumm against his chest. There was something there, something magical or a monster or both.

He looked closer at the entrance of the cave, putting his hand against his medallion to still it. Something caught his attention. Some slight sound fluttering in the depths of the cave. Definitely something alive in there, and Eskel had been on the Path long enough to know it wasn’t friendly. He took a deep breath, the damp earth and rotting greenery was a prevailing scent, but under that he could smell the nasty stink of something ugly. Nekkers maybe. Could be devourers, or a cyclops; all of them stank to high heavens.

He sheathed his steel blade and pulled the silver one. Then he stepped into the dark of the cave. 

Each step was even along the well worn rock floor. Whoever had used this cave did so often enough that they wanted it to be easy to walk through. The years of disuse meant there were roots cutting through the crumbling rock and hanging from the ceiling, sometimes touching Eskel’s face unexpectedly with dry, light brushes that made his skin crawl. Those little fluttering sounds in the distance grew, and Eskel got a sense of multitudes deep in the cave. There was an echoing quality to the air and the faint vibrations in the earth that told him this wasn’t just a simple hidey hole. 

Once he was in the cave proper, the scent changed. In addition to the foul, rank smell of whatever creatures had infested this place, the air was saturated with the smell of dusty herbs and old bones somewhere deeper. The bones could have been left overs from whatever the resident monsters had eaten, but the herbs were curious. Was this a storage place for the old witcher alchemists? The cave was dry enough that it would serve well as one.

He only got about a dozen feet in before the first monster attacked. Years of training had Eskel dodging away from the swipe of claws just before they made contact. He rolled back and away, bringing his sword up to guard. 

A nekker warrior, and a nasty one from the looks of it. 

The monster was humanoid looking, but only barely. It walked on two legs and had a head, two arms, and a recognizable face, but it’s skin sagged and stretched across its frame in odd ways. Flesh bulged out at its stomach, like it had fed well but only gained weight right at its middle or like some of the starvation victims Eskel saw. Its legs were bent and bare, skin filthy with dirt, and its arms hung down far too low. Long blackened claws featured on its hands and its mouth gaped wide. Far, far too wide. Inside were rows of rancid, wickedly sharp teeth.

The thing screeched at him and shuffled in place for a moment, looking for a place to strike. 

Eskel cast Quen around himself, and dashed in. With three quick cuts the thing was hacked to bits, limbs still writhing on the ground as it died. 

But two more had popped up in its place, literally crawling out of the walls. Nekkers did love to tunnel. 

Even more concerning was the fact that Eskel could still hear that vibration, that low thrumming from deep in the cave. There were more of these things. A _lot_ more.

He dashed forward again, impaling one of the things while dodging the claws of the second. The crash of claws skittered off of his Quen shield, sending sparks flying. Another couple of blows like that and the shield would explode outward, causing as much damage as a sword strike. Eskel rolled under another incoming swipe and brought his blade up, cutting the nekker warrior clean in two. 

There was still the third to deal with. It screamed at Eskel, charging in like a pissed off bull. Right into his waiting sword. The claws scraped at the magic protecting him, but to no avail. It was dead in seconds.

The screams had alerted the others, though. Eskel could feel the faint thrumming in the rock as more nekkers tunneled to him, claws scraping against the stone and hearts beating like thunder. 

There were so many of them approaching he didn’t even have the time to take a closer look at what he killed. He just fled. They wouldn’t follow him out of the cave, not far anyways. 

_Geralt may be a gods be damned fool who will run into any situation unprepared, but I’m not_ , Eskel thought grumpily. 

With some effort, Eskel was reasonably sure he could take on whatever was in that cave. But he was also burdened with a huge sack of herbs he’d been picking for the last five fucking hours. If they got soaked in blood, acid, or other bodily fluids he didn’t even want to think about, his efforts would be wasted and he’d have to go gathering them all again. 

On top of that, he knew damn well the nekkers weren’t going anywhere. He could go, drop off the herbs, grab a helping hand, and clean the whole damn cave out without any difficulties at all. 

After all, why risk himself going in alone when Vesemir was close at hand? 

_Fight smarter, not stronger_ , Vesemir had often said. Well, here was his chance to put his money where his mouth was. Eskel could go as _him_ to come help. 

Maybe he’d get some answers about the cave while he was at it.

\--

“If there was a road,” Vesemir huffed. “Why are we climbing?” Something cracked and crunched under his boot, giving way. The tight grip he had on the branches next to him kept him from losing his footing entirely and sliding down the steep slope, but he still had to scramble a little to find a place to step. “Fuck,” he grumbled quietly. He felt too old to be doing this, climbing all over the mountain like a gods be damned mountain goat.

Eskel was a good few steps ahead of him farther up the mountainside. He looked fresh enough, but Vesemir’s experienced eyes told him the other witcher was starting to tire a little. After all, this was the second time in only a handful of hours that he was climbing up a mountain.

 _It’s just a little mountain_ , Vesemir thought, feeling vaguely sour. _It’s not like it’s a sheer rock face. Look at all this undergrowth. Plenty of handholds. This’ll toughen him up._

Most of his irritation had nothing to do with the climb, or Eskel’s abilities. It had everything to do with the strange changes to Kaer Morhen in the wake of Dracula and Alucard declaring it a home away from home.

It had been a couple months since Geralt had brought his new lovers to meet them all, and spring was in full bloom around them. Leafy greens popped up in every nook and cranny, and animals were birthing and roaming the forest and hills. Unlike every other spring, this year Kaer Morhen had played host to far more people through the long cold than Vesemir had expected.

Geralt, Lambert, and Eskel had all stuck around far longer into the spring, though Geralt had just stepped out to take a local job. Triss and Ciri had spent a month of deep winter with them as well, but left long before the first snowdrops bloomed. On top of that was the unsettling presence of Dracula and Alucard haunting the halls. 

And succubi too.

 _Succubi_. In Kaer Morhen!

It wasn’t just smarting professional pride or the burning irony of the situation that got to him. It was also how they’d managed to burn through more of their stored supplies than anticipated. Kaer’s stores could comfortably feed four people through the winter, maybe even the occasional guest. This time there were seven people eating on the regular and demons that, surprisingly, also wanted the food and drink.

That’s why he’d sent Eskel off to gather some herbs. For all the bitching he’d gotten over it, one would think he ordered Eskel to build a greenhouse from scratch to grow the damn things himself. Hell, Vesemir was even kind enough to wait until after dawn to wake the lazy bag of bones. Honestly the witchers in winter were like toddlers, only interested in eating, sleeping, and playing.

“We’re climbing because I only know how to find _part_ of the road,” Eskel said, heaving himself up over the a small boulder.

“What did---” Vesemir had to pause for a moment and take a huffing breath. For fuck’s sake, if there was a road, why didn’t Eskel follow it down on his way out? “What did I tell you about awareness of your surroundings, ack!”

A small rock slipped from under his boot, and he had to scramble again to stay in one place. He couldn’t help but look down and watch the stone tumble down the slope, knocking loose a few more as it fell. There was enough plant matter that it didn’t get too far, but nothing about this particular stretch of mountainside looked stable.

“A witcher,” Eskel intoned in his most serious tone of voice, obviously trying to impersonate Vesemir. “Should be light footed and careful, never put a foot down on where---”

“You do realize I will catch up to you eventually right?” Vesemir asked, looking up at him with irritation.

“I’m counting on the fact there are nasties to kill and possibly treasure to find, to sweeten your mood,” Eskel said seriously.

Vesemir held back a snort of amusement. Ever the good witcher, Eskel was thinking in terms of payment. The fact that he was right only made it more amusing. While Vesemir made it his duty to keep an eye on Kaer Morhen, and thus spent more time there than the other Wolf witchers, by the end of winter even he was itching to get out onto the Path for a while. Kill a few monsters and get some gold.

Vesemir was centuries older than the others, though he only looked perhaps in his late fifties. His hair had long since greyed and his face had a fair share of wrinkles, it was true. But for all that, he was still hale and hearty where it counted. As a witcher, it was critically important to stay as fit as possible, strong and enduring enough to face the most terrible of monsters and weather the most grueling of hunts. As the fencing master of Kaer Morhen, it was his job to keep his skills and abilities as finely honed as possible. Even though the Wolf school was mostly dead and his new students were few and far between, Vesemir knew that the skills only he could impart might mean life or death to his boys.

So he was more than ready to find this monster infested cave that Eskel had told him about. Eager, even. 

The Wolf marking that Eskel told him about was extremely curious. It could be anything, from an old forge, to training grounds, to a lost treasury. There were still places scattered over the world where the old masters had hidden diagrams and weapons unique to the Wolf school. Witchers, once gaining their medallion and activating it, were sent out on the Path. Some of those lived long enough to become scholars and researchers, designing new and amazing things to make the fellow witchers more efficient. Not all of them made their way back to the school with their new creations. 

Though why such a stash would be within half a day’s walk of Kaer Morhen, Vesemir wasn’t sure.

By the time they’d found the narrow path that Eskel had talked about, the day was halfway done. The sun was still high on the sky, but Vesemir expected that they would probably be making their way down the mountainside well after dark. 

Not that it would be much of an issue. The moon and stars would be out, and with their enhancements that would be plenty of light to see by. They brought torches and Cat potions for the cave, too. Just in case. 

Preparation was key for a witcher, and it never hurt to plan for worst case scenarios.

They followed the little path along the mountain side. Eventually they came across the small landslide that Eskel had stumbled into earlier, and with a few well placed, careful Aard signs had it cleared away. That tipped them off that they were close.

As they turned in around the corner towards the cave, Vesemir’s medallion vibrated, short and sharp. He took a swift breath inwards, uneasy sensation flooding down his back.

This cave, this place _looked_ disturbingly familiar. Something about it stuck in his mind. It niggled in the back of his brain, but for the life of him he couldn’t place it. He could have sworn he’d never been to such a place; certainly he would have remembered a mountain path in this part of the valley. Vesemir thought he knew the ground here with perfect clarity. But here was this cave, so oddly recognizable and yet seemingly completely new.

“What?” Eskel asked, stopping to turn back and stare at him. 

“I…” Vesemir tilted his head, brows furrowed deeply. “I think I know this place.” He turned around to look back onto the trail they followed to get there. “I’ve no memory of this path though.” 

No, there was nothing familiar about the path. Not even a little. But he was nearly certain he’d seen that cave mouth before. Maybe he’d just seen one _like_ it while he was out hunting. 

“Well that bodes fucking well,” Eskel grumbled, and turned to look back at the cave. He adjusted his sword harness and pulled tight the leather cord that bound up his shoulder length brown hair. Nervous gestures, perhaps. Or maybe he was just settling in for the hunt in front of them. It was hard for Vesemir to tell. For all that he called Eskel one of his boys, Eskel had been walking the Path alone for almost a century now. He was an experienced man that tended to keep to himself and share little of his life, just as Vesemir did. It meant, Vesemir realized with sudden clarity, that he didn’t know him as well as he thought he did.

Normally, Vesemir might have spouted off with some reassurance, some old wisdom about the fearlessness or ruthlessness of witchers. 

But that cave mouth yawned in front of them, dark and deep. The half ripped vines dripping down the rock face reminded him of teeth, or perhaps strings of saliva dripping out of a hungry creature’s maw. 

_Ridiculous_ , he thought to himself. 

He couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding that fluttered in his stomach, though. The entrance to the cave looked darker than the deepest hole he’d ever had the displeasure of being in. For some bizarre reason, his mind was quick to attribute it to something sinister.

“Come on,” Eskel said, his normally rough voice even more abrupt than normal. “The sooner we get done with this, the sooner I can go back to picking your damn flowers.”

“ _Your_ flowers, too, boy,” Vesemir griped back at him, He shoved his odd reaction aside and followed Eskel in. Fear was a useful tool, up to an extent, but it should never rule one’s actions. “The way you all go through them, you’d think none of you ever stop to pick any while out on the Path.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Eskel waved a dismissive hand at him, though the response sounded more automatic than sincere. His eyes stayed glued to the cave in front of them. 

For a moment, Vesemir wondered if he could feel it too, that sense of unease. Then he reminded himself that there were damn nekkers in the cave and Eskel was probably wisely keeping an eye out for them.

 _Eyes where the danger is at_ , he thought. But for the first time he had to wonder if he was thinking of the nekker infestation or the cave itself. 

But that was ridiculous. It was just a cave.

Just as they stepped in the entrance way, Vesemir stopped to brush his hand over the Wolf symbol etched into the rock wall. 

“Well?” Eskel asked after a moment. “Any ideas what this place is? Or was.”

Vesemir licked his lips and swallowed hard. “Maybe.” He looked into the dark of the cave and had to wonder. The sense of familiarity only grew, but with it also grew his sense of dread. Whatever he was feeling he did his best to keep it off of his face. Emotion was a luxury that witchers couldn’t often afford. “We’ll have to go in to see.”

Eskel gave him a side-eyed look, drew his silver sword, and quickly downed a couple of potions. He was good at swordsmanship, all the Wolf witchers were, Vesemir made sure of that. But Eskel’s signs were extremely powerful. No doubt he was dosing up with a Tawny Owl potion to ensure he could cast near constantly through the fight ahead. The other potion was probably a Swallow, for extra quick healing. It reminded Vesemir to take one as well. His own passive healing was extremely good. That was one of the reasons he’d survived the attack on Kaer Morhen. But a little extra couldn’t hurt, and something about this place made Vesemir want to be extra careful.

Then he watched as Eskel reached into his belt and pulled out an unfamiliar green potion. He downed that too, wincing as the veins on his forehead briefly bulged out. It couldn’t be Petri’s Philter, a potion that witchers often used to bump up the intensity of their signs. Vesemir knew the smell and color of that one, usually pale blue, and whatever Eskel took was something different.

“What’s that?” he asked curiously. It was usually Lambert that brought new and horrifying recipes to them, his talent definitely leaning towards Alchemy.

“Ekkimara decoction,” Eskel said, his voice even more raspy now than usual. “A new thing I’m testing.”

Vesemir nodded. It was a good idea, to test a new potion when Eskel had a backup. If something went wrong, Vesemir could take care of it and at worst force some White Honey down his throat to cancel the effects.

“What’s it do?”

“It’s supposed to reflect some of the damage I take back at the opponents. I have my Quen modified to enhance the effect.”

Vesemir lifted his eyebrows, less at the new potion and more at the casual mention of modifying the Quen shield. He was so used to being a teacher, he didn't always remember that he too could learn thing from his pupils.

“Teach me the formula before you leave,” Vesemir said before he reached over his shoulder and drew his silver sword.

The two of them headed in.

The moment they passed through the mouth of the cave, Vesemir’s Wolf medallion vibrated a bit stronger against his armor. No doubt it was reacting to the nekkers still crawling through the cave. 

A stale breeze blew out of the cave, making Vesemir think that there was at least one other opening to the world to let that airflow through. With it came the stench of fetid monster nests and blood. Strangely, those smells were faintly underpinned by the scent of dusty herbs and bones. 

As they stepped forward, Eskel flicked his wrist out. With a lightning quick flash of power, he lit a torch along the wall. He’d used the Igni sign to do so, sure, but Vesemir had to marvel at his mastery of it. No verbal command, no specific hand position for focus, and the energy came so quickly to him. It was fast as well as incredibly precise. The torch didn’t burst into flames like an explosion; it was more like it just...lit itself. Vesemir’s own signs were good, but he didn’t have the sheer power that Eskel had at his command. It seemed likely that Eskel would probably be able to cast his signs without any hand movement at all. Vesemir had to wonder if he’d tried that already.

It didn’t take long for them to reach the corpses of the nekkers Eskel had killed earlier that day. Vesemir crouched down to get a closer look at the remains.

Three of them, from the pile of body parts. Each cut was clean and strong. Excellent blade work, as far as Vesemir could see. A little glow of pride warmed inside his chest. 

“Nice work,” he said evenly. There was no sense in being to effusive, but it was a good idea to give praise where it was due. 

Eskel tilted his head in acknowledgement of the compliment, but kept his eyes on the far depths of the cave. There was a distant scratching sound coming from the depths. Vesemir could just barely make it out. It seemed likely that Eskel could hear more, based on what he knew of both of their enhancements. 

“Lots more where those came from,” Eskel said.

“No doubt about it.” Vesemir stood up. “We can harvest the bodies once we clean this nest out.”

Eskel nodded in agreement. They followed the narrow pathway forward, heading deeper into the cave. 

As they moved, Eskel continued to light the torches along the wall, offering more than plenty light for their sensitive eyes to see in. Wooden steps were built to scale some uneven bits of rock in the way, and the scent of bones, herbs, and monster all got stronger.

As they moved, the feeling of familiarity only increased. Something about the smell of the place stuck in Vesemir’s nose, crawled down his spine, and twisted in his stomach. Those first little hints of unease had bloomed into a sickening abhorrence and for the life of him, Vesemir couldn’t think of why that was. 

The narrow pathway eventually opened up to a much larger cavern. Before Vesemir could get a good look at the contents, nekkers swarmed them.

Nekker warriors led the charge, towering a good foot and a half over their lesser counterparts. In a heartbeat, Vesemir cast his Quen, shielding himself, and he could sense Eskel had done the same next to him, though his Quen seemed to shimmer differently in the light.

The next minute was a spree of blood and death as Eskel and Vesemir slashed and cut their way through the mob. Claws skittered off their magic shields as they ducked and pirouetted, stabbed and slashed. Vesemir’s sword hummed from the power of the runes engraved on it activating, freezing the fetid creatures as it struck them and enhancing the speed and power of his blows with every swing.

They made short work of the monsters, and soon enough every last one of them was in pieces on the floor, dead or dying swiftly. There must have been ten or twelve of them. Not an unreasonable number to deal with for one witcher alone, but certainly a great deal easier with two.

Blood covered the cave floor, spilling out and neatly overwhelming the rest of the immediate scents. Vesemir looked over the bodies, analyzing just how badly chopped up they were. Priority number one was always to survive, and killing the monsters was a very close number two. But beyond that, it was always nice to see the bodies left fairly intact. Or at least in manageable chunks. Much easier to strip them of their parts that way. As foul as it was to field dress a rank, dismembered monster, the potions that could be made from those body parts were invaluable.

Happily, it looked like there would be plenty to harvest.

More worryingly was the fact that Vesemir’s Wolf medallion hadn’t stopped vibrating. It was moving at a significantly less agitated rate, but it was still jittering softly. They weren’t alone in the cave yet. 

Eskel lit another torch and Vesemir got a good look at the room around them.

It was like being hit right in his solar plexus, the breath leaving him in a rush as his body froze in place. The tip of his sword was dragging over the cave floor, he knew, but in that single moment he _didn’t care_.

Memory flooded back to him, filling his mouth with sour taste of vomit and making his fingers twitch as the distant memory of agony washed over him. He _had_ been in this place. A long, long time ago, when he was just a child himself.

This was where the Trials were held before Kaer Morhen was built. 

He breathed through his nose, trying to quell the unreasonable queasiness of his stomach. Distantly he heard Eskel moving, a wet squelch of his sword hitting something fleshy and wet, a groan and a hollow explosion after. But he couldn't make himself turn to look. He stood there, frozen in place, staring at the dusty, half destroyed items in front of him.

The shelves, the tables, the cold, achingly high roof ceiling. The rough rock walls and the layered look to them...it was all the same. 

He never knew how he got here when it was his time to be tested. The location of the cave was a closely guarded secret, known only to those teachers who oversaw the Trials. 

Once Kaer Morhen was built, the Trials were held in a lab under the keep. Everyone knew where the lab was, and boys were marched down there when it was their time. But back when Vesemir was a child, new to this life and half the size of a grown man, he and his fellow trainees were drugged and smuggled out of the barracks in the middle of the night. All to protect the secret of the mutagens from foe and curious children alike.

They woke up in this room, this starting area, still foggy and reeling from the sleeping potions that were given to them. Vesemir had taken them willingly. He knew this was his fate and he’d wanted to be a witcher. Some of the other boys had to be force fed. 

They’d been scared, those other boys. They knew that almost certain death awaited them. The mutagens were the witcher’s most closely held secret for a reason. The enhancements were incredible, it was true, and they made witchers into killing machines. Stronger, faster, magically skilled to some degree, with slit pupil, gold eyes, and the endurance of twenty men. Resistant to poisons of all kinds, immune to disease. Sterile.

But the cost was brutal. Only one in ten children survived the Trials, and the process was unimaginably agonizing. The potions that were forced into them stayed in the body for days and days. Once the mutagen was taken, all they could do was writhe in horrific pain, feverish and bleeding from every orifice. Vomiting. Shitting. Screaming. _Hallucinating_. 

Just standing here brought it all back. The way his excitement had dwindled into cold terror under the stern gazes of his teachers. There were three of them overseeing his first Trial, the Trial of Grasses. Each one of the trainees could have been a wooden doll for all the care that they’d been given. Before they were even properly awake, they were bound, not cruelly, but tight enough that the movement was kept to a minimum. One teacher took notes, looking over each boy with a clinical interest, while the other two got the children prepared. Divesting them of weapons, binding them, and pouring a draught of honey sweet liquor down their throats. Some distant, sane part of Vesemir’s mind realized that it was probably White Honey; used to cast off the effects of the sleeping potion before they were to be given the mutagens. Most of him was caught up in the horror of it; the awful sickeningly sweet taste burned in the back of his mouth for a moment like bile.

“Vesemir?” Eskel sounded careful, worried even. He was standing just out of Vesemir’s reach, the faint shimmer of his Quen shield around him. “What is it?”

“Gods,” Vesemir said quietly. He shook his head a little, but he still couldn’t force his eyes away from the shelves lining the walls, from the endless baskets of herbs and little stools where the teachers sat to write observations. This wasn’t even the room they were tested in, and it still gave him shaking chills. “This is where they did the Trials.” 

His mouth had gone bone dry and his throat clicked as he swallowed. Acid churned in his stomach and a deep cold settled over him as he fought back the memory of pain and screams.

“What?” 

Movement out of the corner of his eye told him that Eskel had stopped to turn to him, but Vesemir couldn’t pay him any mind. 

“Before Kaer Morhen was built,” Vesemir said absently. He stepped over to one of the tables. A preparation table for herbs, he recalled. The smell of them still hung in the air. Normally he found the scent of herbs soothing, but this particular mix made his spine tighten and his nose twist in disgust. There was nothing in the world quite like this smell, and he was nauseous just standing here. 

Carefully, he ran a hand across the top of the table. How much poison had been created here? For that’s really what the mutagens were. Poison. So many had died. It was something Vesemir didn’t think of often. When he was a teacher, he could justify it. They were the unwanted children of the world. Orphans and bartering chips, given away and sold, left on doorsteps and forgotten. The witchers took them and made them something better, something stronger. 

But standing here, remembering the agony he’d gone through, the screams that had lasted until he had no voice left to get them out, it was difficult to think about how much good witchers could do.

“This is where they did the Trials before Kaer Morhen was built, back when we were all in the old barracks,” Vesemir said again, voice hoarse and rough. “This is where I was tested.”

Eskel blinked at him, face going slack with shock. A soft _ugg_ sound came out of him, almost as if it was pulled right out of his chest. He looked around quickly, but what he was searching for Vesemir didn’t know. 

“We never knew where the Trials were held,” Vesemir said quietly. “No one knew except the teachers responsible for administering them. Boys would just disappear, never to be seen or heard from again. We all knew what had happened, though, just as your generation knew. They’d taken the trials and failed.” 

Eskel turned away from him, hiding whatever expression was on his face, but Vesemir couldn’t bring himself to care. He was too busy thinking back through the dusty years. Saliva pooled in his mouth as he fought back the urge to vomit. The stink of blood wasn’t near enough to wipe away that awful mix of herbs in the air. His hair prickled along his neck and he gripped his sword tight, tight enough that his fingers hurt.

“Once we moved to Kaer Morhen, they felt a little safer. Behind walls.” A bitter, awful laugh poured out from Vesemir’s mouth. “ _Safe_. So they set up their lab in the basement, complete with Circle of Elements to fuel their magic. We see how well that bloody worked out for us.”

He’d been there when they all died. Watched them all get slaughtered under the sheer force of numbers and magic thrown against them. They’d have held out, if not for the mages. An army could have sat at their walls for years and gotten nowhere, but it was the damn mage’s siege magic that had broken through that most precious line of defense. 

Eventually he grit his teeth and gave himself a mental shake. That was long past. He was a _witcher_ for fuck’s sake. Bad memories wouldn’t rule him.

But the sense of disquiet and disgust didn’t leave him. The cave echoed in a strange fashion, and Vesemir fancied he could almost hear voices off in the deep. 

_It’s the nekkers_ , he thought. But that sounded like a platitude even in his own head. 

The gentle shushing of their breathing took on a new life in the dark, empty space of the cave, reflecting back at them. Almost like the soft whispers of children breathing harshly in the dark. 

“Fuck,” Eskel said, voice hushed and rough in the darkness. 

A couple more torches burst into life in the room, though their light did nothing to dispel the twisting horror growing in Vesemir’s gut. He wandered from shelf to shelf, looking in baskets and peeking inside of cabinets. 

He was just searching for anything useful. Surely. That’s what witchers did. They killed off the monsters and then took what they needed. It wasn’t that every touch, every puff of dusty scent that flooded him as he moved the old objects brought back another viscerally sharp memory. Like a knife to his throat. Or his heart. 

“I have to wonder if the other teachers, the ones who did the trials for you boys, knew about this,” Vesemir said quietly. He wasn’t really paying attention to the words. They just sort of tumbled out. “Did the secret of this place die with the men who trained me? Or did our brothers know, and it died with Kaer Morhen?”

“And now it’s filled with nekkers,” Eskel said with an unpleasant laugh. “The irony.”

Vesemir grimaced, and then nodded. He dropped his hand from the shelf he’d been looking at and forced himself to focus on the present. The weight of his sword in his hand and the feel of his Wolf medallion vibrating softly around his neck. 

He _tried_ , anyways. The disquiet wouldn’t go away, nor would the quiet whispers from the past, echoing in the rock.

“Let’s clean this place out and see what is left here,” Vesemir forced himself to say. Whatever he was feeling was irrelevant. There was a job to do. “I don’t expect much, but...it’s hard to say.”

Eskel grunted in agreement and then headed deeper into the cave, with Vesemir trailing after him. 

It was strange, following Eskel along through the dimly lit corridors. They were both fully armored and with swords in hand. Grown men, even. But Vesemir still couldn’t help but think of the marching line of trainees as they were led one by one into the testing area. Even the lit torches along the way didn’t help alleviate that sensation. It only reminded him more strongly of what happened when he was a child. 

Years and years and years ago, and still this memory was as bright and terrible as ever. Vesemir found himself equally disgusted and awed by that fact.

The deeper they went into the cave, the more obvious it was that humans had used it extensively and for a very long time. There were raised platforms cut into the rock, probably to protect from the dampness, on which old cabinets were all but falling apart, some old brewing equipment that stood in a surprisingly good condition, and the broken down remnants of devices Vesemir couldn’t even guess at. 

By now, without talking about it, he and Eskel assumed roles. Eskel was guarding, killing the occasional nekker that tunnelled out from the walls or the ground, while Vesemir looked through the remnants. To do so was second nature; they’d been training and fighting together long enough that the division of labor was as deeply ingrained as their careful steps and readied swords. 

It meant that Vesemir’s mind could spend the bulk of his attention on what they were seeing. Or rather, what he was remembering, seeing in his mind’s eye. He could almost see the damn instructors walking along beside them, towering over them as they did when he was a child. At any moment he could turn around and see the line of shuffling children after him, each one of them fading into the dark of the cave, nothing more than a pair of wide, glistening eyes, fearfully staring back at him.

“Fuck,” Eskel said quietly, his voice tight not with spotting immediate threat but with something else, something deeper in the next room. He pulled out one of the torches from a pile of them he found on the ground and lit it. 

When he moved left Vesemir noticed what caught his attention.

It was the table used for Trials, what the boys dubbed a Sad Albert many years ago. It was cruder than the one that was still tucked away in Kaer Morhen, the metal grating spaced differently and the prongs thinner. The newer one was wider, meant to not hurt as badly. Vesemir shifted uneasily, the memory of the thin metal prongs digging into his skin rose up suddenly in his mind. The cold of that metal grid had burned against his feverish body. It hurt so much to lay on it for more than a few minutes and boys undertaking the Trials spent days in it. Though, truthfully, after only a few hours those paltry pains weren’t even noticeable. There was only the agony of the Trial.

The thin metal strips that made up the table looked more like half a human shaped cage than a table. Logically, Vesemir knew the cage like design was to make cleaning the boys easier. They were stripped naked, he remembered, possibly so the teachers could just pour a bucket of water over them to wash out the blood, shit, and vomit. Whether they actually did that or not, Vesemir couldn’t be sure. He didn’t remember anything but the pain. The vomiting and the delusions. Maybe the cages were just easier to clean than a flat table once a boy had died. Nothing to scrape off of wood, after all.

“I never went there,” Eskel said suddenly.

“Hmm?” Vesemir tried to pull himself out of the past, but the sound of screams rang in his ears.

“To the basement,” Eskel said. “Where they did the Trials. I never went back.” Eskel turned to look at Vesemir. “I couldn’t stand the smell that wafted up the stairs, much less go down there.” Eskel looked down at his free hand and flexed it, making his glove creak. “Even after the raid, I couldn’t make myself go back there.”

“Yes.” The word was said dully, with no little disgust. “That smell sticks with you. Mixes with the blood and the pain.” A terrible shudder raced through Vesemir’s body, and he worked his jaw for a moment. He swallowed down the bile that rose up in his throat. Gods, but this stench would cling to him for days. Forever, he thought. “Even though I was fencing master at Kaer Morhen, I wasn’t given leave to wander there myself.” His eyebrows twitched a little as he struggled with the memories. “I suppose I could have forced the issue, but why? After the attack, after I’d managed to scrape myself together, I searched through the ruins. Basement too.”

Eskel looked away for a moment and then to Vesemir.

“Why?”

“Because there was no one else left to do it,” he said simply. “Someone had to see what had become of us. I had to…I had to see. If there was anybody left to save.” Vesemir swallowed, remembering how it felt to stumble along the long and winding corridors with his middle just barely bandaged to stop his guts from spilling out. All he remembered was agony, though he couldn’t pinpoint what hurt the most. It was just feverish, burning pain. It blinded him and somehow focused him at the same time, turning all the world into a tunnel of just the next two steps in front of him. “I hate to say that I was relieved to see that it had been destroyed, if only because it meant that nothing had been stolen.” 

In that moment, Vesemir felt thousands of years old. To be the last one responsible for such a terrible burden was a heavy task. “If anything had been taken, I would have hunted them to the ends of the earth. As awful and terrible as the Trials were, they were done to create protectors. What horrors could someone create with our mutagens if they didn’t even have that as a motive?”

Eskel just stared at him for a moment, his face unreadable.

There were two tables, one under each wall, framing the main pathway. The one Eskel was standing near was in a better condition than the one opposite it, where the rust mostly ate through it. There were still empty vials standing on a little side table attached to the foot of the device. One of them, impossibly, was still full and sealed with wax. Vesemir reached for it, feeling the nausea rush back and picked it up. The thick, green liquid was murky and there was some sediment, but it still looked viable. Maybe it was the mutagen, maybe it was one of the potions that were given to him before or after administering the mutagen. He knew he was given something, remembered the tube being forced down his throat at some point.

He put the vial down, noticing his hands were shaking. There hadn’t been a nekker crawling out of the walls in a while and his medallion stopped vibrating when he wasn’t paying attention. He reached behind his back to bump his weapon harness and put the tip of his blade into the sheath peeking up over his shoulder. The move was so ingrained he didn’t even have to look if he was aiming right. The soft, shur-shur sound of the blade going into the scabbard felt soothing in a way, settled his nerves a tiny bit. Something familiar. Something he knew and mastered.

“I hate this thing,” Eskel said suddenly and Vesemir had to still himself less he jump in startlement. He forgot Eskel was here, he forgot this wasn’t just a bad memory. “We called ours a Sad Albert,” he continued in his damaged voice. “But this seems somehow sadder.”

“They streamlined the process in later years,” Vesemir said through a throat tight with the taste of remembered bile. “By the time the attack happened they could get the ratio up to three boys out of ten.” He looked down at the shattered vials scattered around the table. “They started using more potions during the Trials, to prepare the body.” He paused and looked down at the rusting table. “Or maybe just numb the brain.”

“Such a fucking waste,” Eskel growled. “All those children. Some of them probably died of shock.” He kicked the table, making a cloud of dust shoot out into the air. “Such a fucking waste.”

“Is it?” Vesemir had to ask. As a witcher, he had to deal with cold practicalities all the time. It was part of the Path. Emotion was often a liability, and he’d long since been trained to look only at the end results. “How many lives would you say you’ve saved in your time on the Path? Ten? Fifteen? Each one of us could save that many in a week. In a day, depending on the hunt. The humans forget that without us, they would have been long since over run. Those are just the hard facts of the matter.” He grimaced, and ran his fingers over the metal frame of the testing table. Just touching it made him want to vomit, but he kept it down. He forced himself to keep touching it, if only to prove to himself that he had the willpower to do so. “The cost is terrible, which is why we always worked to make the process better. But it is necessary.”

“It’s torture. Of _children_.” Eskel looked at him hard, but there some of the heat in his voice had left. “None of whom had any choice in the matter.”

“Most of us weren’t wanted anyways.” There wasn’t even a hint of bitterness in Vesemir’s voice. He’d long since come to terms with his own place in the world. A heavy sigh left him and he shook his head. “We weigh lives everyday, by our actions or inaction. You can think of how vicious and cruel we witchers are, and you’d be right. Heartless and cold. But I also look at the countless towns we save, the endless stream of monsters that die by our blades. One witcher can change the course of so many lives.”

“Do you believe it?” Eskel asked, not looking at Vesemir, eyes fixed on the ledger still in his hand.

Vesemir felt the cold metal on his fingers and heard the screams echoing in his skull. A weariness to deep and heavy for words came over him, and sourness rose in his throat.

“...I used to,” he said finally, quietly. He shrugged, just a tiny, half movement. 

How could he weigh these horrors? The death of ten children now in exchange for the safety of hundreds later. Potentially thousands over the course of a lifetime, especially for older witchers like what was left of the Wolf school. It was undoubtedly true that witchers had saved humanity, but so too was it true that they became monsters to do so. Humans gave them up, spit on them, and shunned them, all while begging for their aid and scrabbling to steal the very secrets they despised.

Eskel nodded, but still didn’t look at Vesemir.

His kick had made the table tilt and fall. One of its wooden supports crumbled under the blow and made the whole thing fall sideways, hitting a small desk tucked in a little further up the wall. The wood there, dry and old, gave in and the whole thing collapsed on itself. As it did, a leather and metal bound book fell to the floor and stopped just inches from Eskel’s feet. He picked it up and opened the old, crumbling pages.

“What is it?” Vesemir asked, watching the way Eskel’s face tightened, the scars and the flickering torchlight giving him an almost demonic look.

“A ledger,” Eskel said after a long moment, his voice raspy and low. Then he started reading it out loud:

“Barthel of Hengfords, age nine, died after administering the Witchgrass. Heart failure. Dederik of Ghelibol, age ten. Survived the Trial, died shortly afterwards. Multiple organ failure. Jaap of Ban Glean, age eight. Survived the Trial but damage to brain was too extensive. Had to be euthanized. Aleid of Roggeven, age ten, died after administering Speargrass. Cerebral hemorrhage. Koenrad of Rinbe, age 9. Survived. Convalescing. May begin training next month.” Eskel trailed off. When Vesemir came closer, he noticed that it was maybe one third of the page that was readable. The rest was either crumbled or faded into nothing. The book was half a handspan thick and from the looks of it was filled only with the names of the candidates and laconic description of their gruesome deaths.

Vesemir didn’t recognize the names, but they didn’t have to be ones from the same years as him. Besides, it wasn’t like he had a lot of memories from before the trials. That too was part of the price paid to become a witcher.

Just reading those names made Vesemir’s memory howl a little harder in the back of his mind. Maybe these _were_ his fellow trainees, his yearmates. Suddenly, every empty imaginary sound that filled the dark halls of the cave took on the familiar sounds of his childhood. Voices that he could remember clear as day but had no name laughed in his ears, making his stomach twist even harder. 

He had no choice then, none of them did. But later, when Vesemir became fencing master at Kaer Morhen, he’d been at least a little responsible for each and every death. He’d believed in what he was doing at the time, believed that the small cost of pain and death in the present was worth the greater safety of humanity as a whole and the continuation of their traditions. 

Now, each and every name on that page mocked him, and he had to wonder if it really was the right choice. 

He had to wonder if his fellow teachers had questioned themselves like this. Did they stand here, exactly in the same spot he was standing now, ears filled with screams and pitiful begging, and wonder if the ends justified the means? Were they callous zealots, so sure of their purpose that no agony was enough to move them? Or were they simply as heartless as the stories made them out to be, unmoved by anything beyond their goal and how to accomplish it.

Standing in this awful place, with the scent of mutagens and death in his nose, Vesemir had to wonder. 

Eskel put the ledger down on the nearest bit of surviving furniture and wiped his palm against his pants, as if trying to get rid of the feel of it in his hand. The sight of it almost brought up a bitter laugh from deep in Vesemir’s chest, but he held it in. He knew there was no wiping off the feel of this place. It would linger on their skin, in their lungs, for a good long while. No doubt they’d be tasting the vile dust in every bite of food for weeks.

After taking one last look around, Eskel moved away, like maybe he’d be able to outrun the memories just by walking away quickly enough. Vesemir trailed after him, but his gaze lingered on the tables. As repellent as they were, he almost couldn’t tear his eyes away. Once they were out of sight it was easier to move on, though the cave passage way seemed far more oppressive than it should have been. 

They moved deeper into the cave slowly, with loose stones and other debris crunching under their feet. As they walked, the walls seemed to press in on them, but only when Vesemir wasn’t looking. If he stared right at a portion of rock, it was just rock. But there, on the edge of his awareness, right at the corner of his eye, the stone seemed to move. Shadows crept in on them, eating into the light of the torches, and making Vesemir’s hair stand on end. His hands were cold and clammy, but a lifetime of habit kept him from doing anything about it. Whatever he was feeling, he would keep to himself. 

Feelings were a liability. 

Reminding himself of that still wasn’t enough to keep his jaw from clenching up tight or fine shivers from racing up his back.

As they walked deeper into the narrow passage, they passed by odd animal carcass thrown here and there; clearly a nekker meal at some point. The farther in they went in, the more damaged the cave was. There were cracks in the walls and a pile of rocks that blocked the whole left side of the passage. Air blew out of the cracks, stale and reeking of dried herbs. Normally that was a soothing smell for Vesemir, but this particular combination hit him hard in the hindbrain, scrambling his nerves and flooding his brain with thoughts of his Trial. 

Gods, he screamed so much when it happened. The pain and the blood and the stench of it was unbearable. 

But bear it he did. There was no other option.

Only once in his very long life had Vesemir felt something close to that level of pain and horror. That was the day Kaer Morhen fell to the angry mob outside their gates. 

They’d been under siege for days, tense and waiting. By mutual consent, most of the teachers had kept up their classes, if only to keep the children settled. They added in additional training for specific defenses in the castle, pointed out which halls and corridors were narrow enough to be held by one skilled fighter, no matter the opposition. They’d briefed them all on what to do in case of a hundred different worst case scenarios. They’d also stopped administering the trials, waiting for a safer time to monitor the trainees. 

None of it had helped, in the end. The numbers were too overwhelming and there was only so much a couple dozen adult witchers and forty half trained children could do. 

It was a _slaughter_. The stones were stained with blood and viscera, and no mercy was granted, not to anyone. During the heat of that final attack, Vesemir had fallen into a battle frenzy, killing with wild abandon. He didn’t pause, didn’t even blink at the deaths around him. His brothers. His children, all falling. _Screaming_. 

In the end, he’d fallen too. Stabbed, cut, destroyed in a dozen different ways, and left to bleed out on the stone in the courtyard. He watched with hazy eyes as the mob walked right over them all, stepping on bodies, heedless of the souls under their boot heels. 

A dark, bitter laugh threatened to bubble out of him. 

Here he was, bemoaning the loss of all of his school, _right_ after arguing with Eskel that a few children’s deaths was worth the greater good. His own sheer hypocrisy threatened to choke him, and the sound of cruel laughter and screams grew louder in his ears. 

Still, he couldn’t find it in himself to feel any different. The Wolf school, for all its faults and atrocities, had done immeasurable good over the course of its long, bloody life. They’d saved so many, changed the face of the world with their brutal, callous blades. 

He’d cared for every single one of the souls that came through his classes. He nursed their wounds, laughed with them, bleed with them, taught them everything he possibly could to prepare them for a life of horror. And when they died in the Trials or on the Path, he cut off everything inside of him aside from faint sorrow and disappointment. Every single time, he felt like their deaths were his fault. If he’d only trained them better. Taught them more. Been harder or softer. _Something. Anything_ to increase the number of faces that returned winter after winter. 

With that level of care, he couldn’t bring himself to mourn each and every death. He would have gone mad with it.

Witchers were made to die. In a ditch. Alone. 

These were the facts. 

To think otherwise was to court insanity and despair. Or at the very least, an untenable, violent disappointment. 

Though, looking around the dark stone walls and imagining the sound of screams reverberating through them, Vesemir had to wonder just how sane he really was. 

While Vesemir stood, silent and disturbed, Eskel began looking around the damage to the corridor.

“Gotta be something behind here,” Eskel said, perhaps to himself. The air flowing through the cracks was a dead giveaway, and while it did smell foul, it smelled like mutagens, not like the poison air that sometimes lingered in caves. 

After a moment of poking around, Eskel folded his free hand into the Aard sign. The wave of force was aimed low and close to the center, and ended up clearing only the edge of the accumulation. It was an expertly done blast, precise and accurate. The cave echoed with the dull sound, but there was now enough space on the right to squeeze through. 

Eskel went first again, climbing through with his sword at the ready. Almost against his will, Vesemir turned to look behind them. Just to make sure there was nothing following. 

There was nothing. 

Of course there was nothing. Why would anything be there? His medallion was still on his chest and the tunnel was dark and quiet. No line of crying boys, walking towards their deaths. No horde of furious peasants with their hired mages, frothing for their deaths. His mind kept wanting to wander back to the room they just left, to the tables and the memories they invoked.

He had to focus.

With a quick shake of his head, Vesemir squeezed through the pathway made by Eskel’s sign. He popped out into a much wider space than the passage they just left. Eskel had already lit up a few torches on the walls and was crouching near an old cabinet, looking through the contents.

If anything, the smell was worse once he got inside. Again, Vesemir had to swallow hard to keep the bile down in his stomach. 

He thought about the second trial, the Trial of Dreams, where his eyes changed and his very bones were remade. He’d cried tears of blood for days, the red film spreading over his vision as he thrashed and wept through the pain.

Even worse, the smell brought back his trip to the basement of Kaer Morhen directly in the wake of the attack. The way this room looked, broken and forgotten, was eerily similar. As was the smell. Gods, what a terrible stench. His nose _burned_ with the mix of herbs and blood.

 _Nekker blood_ , he tried to remind himself. _I’ve got nekker blood on me, not witcher blood. I’m not even injured._

But it was hard to keep that in mind. Especially when he turned to look behind him and saw the faint outline of his own footprints red with blood. 

It had been just the same after the attack. The blood was everywhere. In every nook and cranny, coating his body and flowing into the cracks of the stone floor. There were parts of the keep that were still saturated in blood, he was sure of it. Brown and hardened through time and neglect, but there. Waiting.

His chest ached with phantom wounds, the ghost of the injuries that had come so close to killing him. He rubbed his hand over his armor, almost nervously. It was a strange relief to feel that it was whole and untouched. 

He shook the feeling away, and went to grab a torch for himself off the wall. The old wood was fragile and dust dry in his hand, but Vesemir couldn’t have cared less. Just touching it was like reaching out to grab onto an anchor to the present day. He couldn’t possibly be stumbling through the aftermath of a battle or shuffling along in line for another Trial. There was this nice, solid, very real torch in his hand. The warmth that sputtered off of it was a firm reminder of what was real and what was simply mental meandering.

It burned well, enough to give him light as he turned to explore the laboratory. Because that was what this place _was_. There were desks and long tables full of manuscripts, and jars that probably held herbs, most of which had no doubt turned to dust. Some of the shelves placed on the walls had fallen down during the years and shattered on the stone floor, spilling their contents everywhere, but most of them were fairly intact. Further down and a little to the right he could see a yawning black hole indicating that the cave didn't end here. 

There were more rooms somewhere beyond.

A shudder crawled up Vesemir’s spine and he looked away. What ever was down those halls could wait a moment.

He headed for the desk first, spotting the small wooden tubes that were used to protect the most valuable scrolls. Surprisingly, they looked whole. That meant there might still be something worth taking there. A layer of dust an inch thick was spread out over them, sticky and heavy. It took a little effort to brushed it off, but when he did, he saw the personal seal of the trainers who carried out the Trials. 

Surprising.

The personal seal of any of the alchemy masters wasn't something that would be used lightly. He picked up the container and immediately felt the weight of something sliding inside it. A little more dusting of the top of the tube showed that the wax seal was still intact.

Vesemir didn’t know what directed his movements then, what possessed him, but he swiped all three tubes from the desk and stuffed them into his pouch while Eskel wasn’t looking. His heartbeat sped up as he settled them into place; his mouth turned dry and his palms itched. He was hyper aware of the slight weight added to his pouch, as if they were hot coals burning through his pocket.

“You found something interesting?” Vesemir asked out loud, ruthlessly making his voice sound calm and controlled.

The scent of herbs, of the mutagens, was much stronger here. Maybe it was the fact they were further away from the entrance, or even deeper into this room where they were obviously created once upon a time. Or maybe it was his own paranoia. 

Dust covered him, coating him in a vile layer of stench and dried horror. He could taste it on the roof of his mouth, on his tongue, and in the back of his throat. The low grade nausea was still churning his stomach and he honestly couldn’t even tell what he was doing, why he was doing this. What was even in this aroma, he had to wonder. His own potions were made from more than just flowers. Carefully harvested blood, bone, and entrails were ground up, mixed in, and infused into his alchemy. That was the best way to make the most powerful elixirs, after all. But after centuries of moldering in the dark, how much of what he was breathing in was herbs and how much were the powdered remains of ancient who-knew-what?

When Eskel spoke to answer Vesemir’s question, Vesemir nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Not really,” Eskel said, voice tinged with mild disappointment. “A few recipes for the potions I already know and there are some old swords in that chest over there.” He pointed to a heavy wooden chest with brass hinges. “Once cleaned and sharpened those could turn out to be pretty good blades.”

Vesemir went to the chest, though he wasn’t truly interested. His mind was still too focused on the tubes burning a hole in his pouch and the acidic memories eating into his brain. But he went along anyways, going through the motions. The intense smell of the herbs kept his stomach right on the verge of rebelling, and his mind constantly worked to replay his Trials in vivid detail.

 _That was a long time ago_. The thought was a little desperate. _It’s done. Over with._

This was so like the search he’d done of the basement laboratory after the attack. So very much like it. The smell, the dizziness. The blood and the dust. Collapsed walls everywhere and shelving all tossed asunder. 

The aching need to look and see, to dig through the remains.

He opened the chest in front of him, the top already less dusty after Eskel went through it. There were two swords, like Eskel said, unwrapped from their oil clothes, but there was also a badly damaged chest armor taking up half of the space. Vesemir reached for it and lifted it enough to take a look and froze.

Jarek had the exact same type of medium weight armor on when the pitchforks impaled him, skewering him from the back. Vesemir reached up, to wipe up the blood splatter off his face, the metallic scent of it thick in his nose.

“Vesemir.” Jarek’s voice was hollow and breathy, his lungs filling with liquid too quickly as he called for him. Lungs punctured no doubt from the tines. Behind him, the sound of the siege spells reverberated against the stone walls, shaking the keep down to its foundations. “Vesemir!”

There was somebody behind him, somebody about to touch him. Vesemir snarled, whirling around, catching the attacker with the back of his arm. But his hands were empty. What the fuck was he thinking sheathing his sword when they were under attack?

He cast Aard; the wide spread wave of force was strong enough to put out the flaming torches and clear him some breathing room. His steel sword following the sign quickly, almost in the same movement. He heard the hiss of his opponent and the smell of fresh blood blooming in the air.

“Vesemir, calm down! It’s me, Eskel!”

It was the gold glow of the Quen shield that clued him in that something wasn't right, that there were things missing. There was no sound of the siege, no thunder of mages raining down fire and destruction on the witcher stronghold. There were no screams or shaking walls. 

“You are safe.” Eskel was speaking to him, quietly, calmly. “I’m a witcher. You are not in danger.” Then Eskel paused. “Well, aside for a nekker or two.”

“Fuck,” Vesemir cursed and raised a shaking hand to wipe at his face. Only after did he realize that his hand was dirty with dust and nekker blood, all of that now stuck to his face. “Damn, I’m sorry.”

He felt ashamed, suddenly, of the weight of his steel blade in his hand. Eskel had his own sword drawn, but it was held behind his forearm, a unique stance he liked to use that favored low, spinning attacks, similar to what knife fighters used. Only a witcher had enough arm strength to pull something like that out. Eskel was surrounded by the shimmering shield, sword and body position defensive. There was a long cut on the outside of his left forearm, bleeding purposefully.

It was going to scar.

Guilt weighed even more heavily on him and he sheathed his sword. His first instinct was to reach out to help Eskel get that cut cleaned up, but he damn well knew better than to approach now. That would likely end with him getting stabbed, and he would bloody well deserve it too. 

Gods, cutting up a brother like that. The hell was he even thinking? 

The last time Vesemir had felt this unmoored was after the attack. 

Before his mind could spiral back down into memory, he shook his head and focused on what was in front of him. The sound of Eskel’s heartbeat, the feel of his boots on the stone ground. 

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I don’t what came over me there.” 

Eskel’s face did something then, like he wanted to say something but changed his mind at the last second.

“Well, there’s a reason I never went down to the part of the basement that the Trials were held in,” Eskel said easily. He sheathed his sword, turned to the torches lining the walls that Vesemir’s Aard has put out, and busied himself with lighting them up again, giving Vesemir space to pull himself together.

The calm, matter of fact way that Eskel just went about restoring order was a blessed relief. Of all the Wolf witchers left, Eskel was the most restful to be around, though that was probably a relative scale. Geralt was often a wild card, running to and from, willing to push and poke at things better left alone. Lambert was so full of anger, showing weakness to him was bound to get him nosing after blood like a wild beast.

Vesemir took a couple of deep breaths through his mouth, hopeful that it would settle him a little. 

“The armor that’s in there,” Vesemir said, waving at the chest he’d looked into. “Probably still useable after a little repair. The metal looks in good condition, though the leather will need to be replaced.” He closed his eyes and focused on his own heart beat. Whatever he was saying, he didn’t really care. It was just something to get Eskel talking to him. “There might be runes here, stashed in the shelves. Look for small, wooden boxes.”

Eskel nodded, saying nothing and Vesemir wondered if maybe his words were unnecessary. It couldn’t be the first witcher hidey hole that Eskel looted in his life.

Rather than help Eskel along, Vesemir found a stool that still looked stable and took a seat. He would have offered to help clean up Eskel’s arm, but with the potions that Vesemir had seen him take earlier, it was probably well on its way to being healed already. 

Memory still crowded him, and it took everything he had to remind himself of where he was. _When_ he was. 

“There’s a passage here,” Eskel called after a few minutes, standing near a bend in the wall. From Vesemir’s position he couldn’t see the passage, but the way the torch Eskel held fluttered madly indicated a breeze.  
Vesemir dragged himself back up to standing and headed over to where Eskel stood peering into the dark. 

Once he approached Eskel, he saw a narrow corridor coming off at an angle. They would have to go single file to fit in there. The air that was coming from there smelled much more earthy. Maybe it was a way out, though Vesemir’s sense of where they were in the mountain didn’t agree with that.

“Lead on, lad,” he said gruffly. The longer this took, the more he ached to leave. This place was a nightmare, and one he was eager to forget about. 

The corridor wasn’t a long one; it only took a few minutes before the sound of their steps changed. Vesemir couldn’t see much beyond the fact they were in a much bigger space, their torches casting only a faint glow around them. The space beyond was dark and indistinct, and the shadows seemed to crawl up from the ground. 

A bone deep weariness tugged at Vesemir’s body. He desperately wanted this night done with. He wanted away from the smell and the dark, knowing stone walls. 

“Let’s split up,” Vesemir said, turning right. Maybe if they could cover more ground faster, they could get out of here sooner. 

He heard Eskel turn left wordlessly, their steps crunching through the loose rocks and other debris scattered about the ground. When Vesemir stepped on something harder and a hollow crunch filled the space, he looked down to check what it was.

There was a bone, a long, yellowed from age bone crushed under his foot. A small one. Definitely human but not of an adult. As he shifted his torch to get a better look at the ground, he saw that the bone was part of a scattered skeleton, the ribs and head just a little way to the right of him. He shifted closer and saw more bones, piled on top of each other, long bones mixing with ribs and multiple skulls scattered about. The skeletons were similar in size to each other; human, but tiny.

It took a long time for his brain to understand what he was seeing, to connect the facts and come up with the obvious conclusion. 

Children. These were children’s bones.

A dull, violent sickness rose in his stomach. His mouth went dry and his his eyes were so wide that they hurt. For a moment, he couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe. 

When the full knowledge of what this room was hit him, it was with the force of a hammer. 

These were the children who failed the Trials. 

There were no additional torches in this place, no furniture, the floor seemed rougher than in the rooms before. No effort was done to smooth it out or create steps where the surface dropped down unexpectedly. It seemed like an indignity of a kind, that the walls where the lab was or the Trial tables stood were smoothed and shaped, shelves put in, and steps were molded wherever there was a shift in levels. Here, not even the cracks were patched. He stared at a small fissure running through the floor, it wasn’t more than two inches wide. Some mortar or even a board or two would fix the problem. But nobody did it. He couldn’t help looking at the pile of bones, noting how some of the skulls were face down. It was as if the bodies were just piled up haphazardly.

He stared around the room, his mind suddenly making sense of what he was seeing. The little shadows that clung and eeled through the torch light were held in the dark hollows between bones. The scent of death and dust and dried bodies wasn’t leftover nekker meals. It was this, this _dumping ground_. 

Vesemir had always known about the sheer numbers of boys that had died during the trials, but deep down he’d always shunned away from thinking about what happened to the bodies. It was never talked about. The matter was simply quietly handled, out of sight out of mind. Nobody ever _saw_ anything being done with them.

As he stood there, he moved his torch around, waving it this way and that. But everywhere he looked there were more bones. Strewn about, piled up. Tumbling this way and that. 

Skulls grinned at him in the dim light and the deep shadows in their eyes seemed to suggest life. Like they were looking at him, at the floor, at their fellows. Sad and angry and a thousand other emotions all suggested by the shape of the bone and the cast of the shadow. 

There was a roaring, a rush of sound far in the distance. It filled up Vesemir’s ears and was drown out only by the thundering sound of his heartbeat. 

So many dead. There were so many.

His brothers, his children all dead around him. A wasteland of death. The darkness that slithered in the cracks of the stone looked like blood seeping down, spilling out from empty rib cages and lopsided heads. 

The roaring got louder and Vesemir had to wonder if it was the mages. They’d probably broken through the walls by now. Or maybe they’d already been and gone, and Vesemir was left to wander the blood soaked halls all over again. 

Always alone. Searching, but never finding. 

\--

Eskel didn’t know what to think.

This whole hunt hadn’t gone at all like he expected it would.

First there was the stuff with the Trials. Gods, the smell of this place. It was close, so close, to the bitter acidic taste that he couldn’t quite forget. Near enough to bring back the memory of his body crippled with the changes being painfully wrought on him, but not so close that it did more than that. Nausea twisted at him and he longed to be done with their exploration, but it was bearable. 

Awful, yes. But bearable.

Vesemir said this was where he was tested. The scent in the air must have been a perfect recall for him. Every witcher knew that scent was the sense most keenly tied to memory, a factor they both guarded against and used ruthlessly while on the Path. Just being here, breathing in the musty, ancient air must have brought back a whole host of things in Vesemir’s mind.

Which brought up the second problem.

Vesemir.

He was acting...off. More than just a bit, if Eskel’s arm was to judge by. The way Vesemir hadn’t recognized him, hadn’t even noticed him standing right there, was very much like how he was just after the attack on Kaer Morhen.

Eskel had been out on the Path when it happened. By the time he’d gotten word, it was already a couple weeks past, and then it took another two weeks more of hard riding to get there. The devastation that greeted him when he arrived was heartbreaking. Walls blackened with holes punched right through them. Blood, so much blood everywhere. But no bodies. Just a long, thick rusted red smear leading out onto the bridge. Evidence of where dozens and dozens of corpses had been dragged along and then dumped into the moat. The normally dark water there had turned rancid black with blood and mud and rubble.

Lambert had already beaten him there, the first one to arrive apparently. As soon as Eskel rode in to what was left of the courtyard, Lambert had pulled him aside and spoke to him in quiet, harsh whispers.

“Vesemir is alive. No one else made it. He’s not right in the head. Watch your back, he’ll attack you if he doesn’t see you coming. Deal with it.” Then he left, going back to clearing the rubble from the front courtyards as if he didn’t just say that their teacher quite possibly lost his mind.

It was true, though. Vesemir wandered through the halls like a damn ghost, his eyes too wide and his body tight with anxiety. Whatever injuries he sustained, he’d long since healed by the time Eskel showed up, but the mental scars were not so easily smoothed over. He muttered to himself, and reacted to things that weren’t there. Every unknown movement or sound was an enemy sneaking up on him, and woe betide anyone who accidentally startled him. The episodes passed quickly, once it sunk in to Vesemir’s head that there were only witchers about him. But Vesemir was the deadliest fighter in all their school. Even a short, startled reaction was viper bite fast and just as punishing.

Later, when he made sure Vesemir wasn’t going to die on them any second, and after he walked the ruined keep to see the scale of the devastation for himself, Eskel let himself marvel at how matter of fact Lambert was about this all. He noticed a few new bandages on his arms, but for all his tendency to complain and gripe, Lambert never mentioned where the cuts came from or tried to blame Vesemir for his state of mind. Eskel decided to follow his example and go about fixing as much as he could, pretending that Vesemir walking the hallways at night and calling out to dead people or trying to stab them in the dark was a normal thing and not worth a mention. When Geralt showed up, he made sure Geralt didn’t bring attention to Vesemir’s state.

As the weeks wore on, Vesemir settled, became more present in the here and now and eventually they all went back out onto the Path. But it was years before Vesemir seemed fully normal again.

The startled attack on Eskel just now brought all of that back. For a minute there, Vesemir had gotten lost in his own head, just like after Kaer Morhen’s destruction and the slaughter that followed. The way this damn cave seemed to press in on them, heavy with memory and buried fear, didn’t fucking help.

When Vesemir suggested splitting up to search the large cavern, Eskel went along without complaint. He was pretty damn dubious about the wisdom of letting Vesemir wander in this state, but the older man had been a witcher for centuries. He could handle himself. It was _Eskel_ who should be worried. But as long as he made sure to stay out of blade distance and be loud, friendly, and obvious with his approach, things should be alright.

Besides, he was about fucking done with this place. It gave him the creeps. Anything that sped up their leaving was a welcome suggestion. 

So he picked his way through the dim rubble and cracked rock, torch in hand. All the while, he kept an ear out, both for more nekkers and for Vesemir. Just in case.

It took a surprisingly long time for him to cotton on that the bones he spotted were the remnants of the boys that didn’t pass the Trials. Maybe his mind just didn’t want to see what he was looking at. 

It shocked him, that he never wondered what happened to the bodies. He remembered how empty the bedrooms were after the Trials. How out of the twenty beds in a room, only a few were occupied. The rest glared at him with their neat blankets and empty coffers.

He never asked.

Nobody ever asked what happened to the bodies. 

There were no funeral pyres, there were no graves. There was always only the training, only the Trials, the need to survive another test. 

Gods, there were so many bones here. Just...scattered around, strewn about like they’d been tossed in and just left where they fell. 

For a minute all he could do was stare in awed horror. 

“Vesemir,” he said, voice cracked and rough. The word didn’t want to come out right, as if his voice, too, had fled in shock. He swallowed hard and tried again. “Vesemir.” It was louder this time, like a proper address.

But there was no response.

Eskel turned to see Vesemir on the far side of the cave, shoulders slumped and his free hand outstretched towards the bones. Like he wanted to touch, but didn’t quite dare.

In a flash, disgust, bright and painful, flooded into him. It was at least half made of the sick twisting in his stomach and the inability for his mind to wrap around what he was seeing. Every time he tried to compartmentalize it and remind himself it was just bones, he’d see the faces of the boys he trained with, the ones who didn’t survive the training. 

It took a minute, but he finally gathered up the impetus to move closer. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Eskel asked, once he got in range. He hoped that Vesemir was in his right mind enough to answer, but he found he couldn’t keep an eye on his old mentor. His gaze drawn by the bones, and all he could do was stare.

Vesemir made a questioning noise, but his eyes were glued to the pile of bones in front of him.

“That they didn’t bury them.”

“I didn’t know,” Vesemir said quietly, his voice dull and eerily vacant.

“This is not right,” Eskel said turning to face Vesemir more fully.

“I thought they’d have at least burned them,” Vesemir said almost to himself, and he shook his head. “Why wouldn’t they even burn them.”

Eskel didn’t bother to say why. He knew. There were too many to bother. There were Trials being done all the time, as the classes kept graduating. There must have been a constant stream of bodies, too many to bother with beyond dumping them.

“Because they were not witchers,” Eskel said dully. “Not worth it to care about them.” He was getting angry, he understood that. But the anger kept growing, bitter and sour in his chest.

Vesemir just snorted in unhappy amusement. “Boy, they wouldn’t have thought witchers were worth burning either. None of us get funerals. No one mourns us but our brothers, and we’re all destined to die in a ditch, bodies forgotten. Besides…” A pained, crumpled look passed over his face, then was gone. “These lads were witchers. The Path just ended for them a little sooner than most.”

“You keep repeating those words like they are your mantra,” Eskel snapped. “Those boys did not die on the Path. They died here, during the Trials they had no say in. They deserved more respect than _this_.” 

Eskel felt sick, when he thought back to his own first Trial and the ones following. _He never saw any burials_. Not for the kids that died. Did that mean there was a place like this, somewhere under Kaer Morhen too? Was there a hole, a cave filled to the brim with bodies? Has he walked over their mass grave without ever knowing?

“Of course they died on the Path.” Something in Vesemir’s voice made Eskel’s hair stand on end, and he watched with a growing sense of dread, cold and heavy in his stomach. “And what else was I to do? What choice did I have but to dump them? Everyone was dead,” Vesemir gestured at the bones all around them. “Everyone. I could barely stand, I’d been skewered so many times. If not for my armor holding everything in, my guts would have long since spilled out. There were bits and pieces everywhere of our brothers, my children, broken on the stone. I didn’t have the strength to bury them or burn them. But if I’d left them, the ghouls and necrophages would have come, and they would have killed me for sure. Finished off what the mob and their mercenary mages had started.”

 _Fuck_. Eskel dragged his hand over his face, feeling how tight his scars were. Fuck it, he lost Vesemir again.

He shifted, not much, but enough he could draw a blade if Vesemir stopped recognizing him.

“I know you had no other choice,” Eskel said evenly. “I’m talking about the boys that died during the Trials.” He probably shouldn't mention it again, but he couldn't stand the look of those bones, couldn’t stomach the thought of just leaving them here with the nekkers and devourers, like they were nothing but trash.

“The Trials?” Vesemir frowned, and shook his head. “Raitah, Serra, and Xen administer the Trials. They take care of what needs to be done.” He frowned harder and looked around the room, eyes flickering this way and that. What he was trying to find, Eskel had no idea. A strange look overcame him and he tilted his head a little as he stared at the bones. “They should have, anyways.”

Inspiration struck, and Eskel found himself nodding along. “They should have, yes. But they messed up, didn’t finish the job properly. Now we need to.”

That actually made Vesemir turn to look at him. Eskel was relieved to see a note of sanity come back into Vesemir’s eyes. He always did take his duty to his school deadly seriously. 

“There’s no precedent for this,” Vesemir said quietly. “We’ve no traditions, no rites or rituals. If there were any to begin with, they died with Kaer Morhen and those who administer the Trials.”

“Then we make some up,” Eskel said firmly. “You know as well as I do that bones deserve a respected resting place.” Before Vesemir could do more than open his mouth to say the same damn rote things over again, Eskel waved the objection away. “I know, I know that all witchers die alone and forgotten. But these ones don’t. _We_ are here, and _we_ haven’t forgotten them. We can give them a little respect and respite, even if it is far too late.”

Vesemir stared at him for a long moment, but eventually he nodded. “You’re right. It’s my responsibility. I should see that the job is done.”

Part of Eskel wanted to object. What happened in this cave had nothing to do with Vesemir’s choices. 

But what happened later at Kaer Morhen, _that_ Vesemir had a hand in. He bore at least some responsibility for everything that happened there, if only because he taught right alongside all of the other elders of the school. What, exactly, he could have done or should have done, Eskel had no idea. It was too big an issue to think about right then, and with the school being destroyed, it was a moot point as well.

Mostly, Eskel was just relieved that he’d gotten Vesemir on board with doing something about this. He looked out over the cavern again, thinking hard about the logistics of what to do.

“There’s a lot of them, but they are only bones,” he said finally. “We could fit them all in one grave, maybe in the back courtyard. Not like there’s anything there.” 

It was true. That part of the courtyard was tiny and completely in shade all year round; nothing grew there except some wild crabgrass and moss. At the moment it was just an empty space that they sometimes had drills on. The unfortunate size and placing wasn’t really useful for anything else.

“We’ll have to build sleds to put them all on. Something we can drag easily,” Vesemir said. “It’s too much for just the two of us to carry on our backs.”

“We could use some of the smaller trees outside the cave,” Eskel said thinking uneasily of leaving Vesemir alone. “We only need them to last for the trip down, shouldn’t be hard to do. I have some twine in my pack.”

“I’ve got some too.” Vesemir nodded. “Useful stuff to have around, in a pinch. You go ahead and get started on building the travois, I’ll start gathering all the bones, make it easier for us to load them up once you’re back.”

Eskel thought about the way Vesemir was already losing touch with reality, so obviously in the throes of a flashback. There was no way in hell Eskel was leaving him in this dark, gods forsaken cave with only the dead for company. Some small, irrational part of Eskel feared that when he came back there wouldn’t be anyone alive left to find.

“I could use your help outside,” he said. “Both of us making sleds at the same time will make it go much faster. Besides, it’s probably better to stick together.”

To Eskel’s vast relief, Vesemir nodded. 

“You are right. We don't know they won’t come back to finish off the survivors.” Vesemir said in his calm, reasonable voice that make goosebumps march down Eskel’s back.

He found he couldn’t force himself to say anything reasonable in response to that. Nothing remotely useful even came to mind. So Eskel just nodded and urged Vesemir out of the cavern with a wave of his hand.

The two of them made their way quickly out of the cave, and Eskel was not the only one who breathed a deep sigh of relief when they finally stepped out into the fresh air. 

Dusk was just starting to settle over the valley. Evening came quickly to the mountains, and though the forest was in full spring growth, the days hadn’t let turned long. All the bright green of the new leaves and startling whites and pinks of the wild mountain flowers had faded into a hundred shades of blue in the gathering evening gloom. Plenty of light for a witcher to see by, though.

They both stood there a moment, just breathing in the scents of the mountain side. The lush fragrance of plants and rock and water mixed in with the far off scent of animals in the underbrush. A few deer quietly moved in the distance, likely in search of their evening meal.

It was a blessed relief to stand outside again, and Eskel let himself fully enjoy it for a long minute. But the weight of the cave and its desperate, sad residents was heavy at his back. He didn’t want to go back in. The very thought of it made his mind rebel and his stomach turn. 

He had to, though. Those poor children inside there deserved some peace. On some level it wasn’t even completely about the children. It was about clearing the witcher’s name. While Eskel agreed that practicality was a thing that was necessary to help them survive on the Path, he felt like this was unnecessary waste, laziness almost. Those candidates that never made it to being a witcher, they needed to be seen to. He needed to erase the blight on the witcher’s honor so that he could continue to believe in it. 

Eskel cast a sideways glance over to Vesemir, who was staring off into the night looking pained and a little broken. Maybe those children in there weren’t the only ones who deserved a little closure.

“Come on. Let’s find some good trees,” Eskel said, forcing himself into action. 

They set to work without another word, and it took almost no time at all to find the appropriate materials. Tall, thin saplings were quickly cut down and stripped of their branches, then lashed together to make the triangle frames of the sleds; one for each of them. Other branches and fallen wood was used as cross beams on the frames, giving a nice firm base for the bones to rest on. On top of that, Eskel lashed on a few evergreen branches, just to make sure there were no holes for anything to fall through. Something about the way the foliage of those deep green boughs curved up reminded Eskel of a plush basket. It was a good place to settle the remains in as they were transported. Soft and fresh smelling, their scent would cover up the stench of the mutagens and herbs clinging to everything inside the cave.

By the time they were both finished, true night had taken over the valley and the moon had just started to peek up over the far mountains. The sky was lit up with a million stars. Something about the quiet peacefulness of the night spoke to Eskel, and his stomach settled a little more. 

The lack of sun meant the cold became biting, temperature dropping fast. Spring had just started, and this far into the the mountains it was still closer to winter than in the valleys. It was true that the cold wouldn’t affect them as much as it would a normal human, due to the enhancements. But that didn’t make it _pleasant_. The cave would be warmer, if only because of the lack of breeze.

The cave. 

With it’s foul stench, blood slicked floors, and piles of bones. Air fetid with centuries of dust. Dust that was at least in part made up of the dried remains of all of those bodies, Eskel suddenly realized with disgust. They’d been walking through it, breathing it in right along with the powdered remains of the mutagens. 

A shudder curled up Eskel’s spine and tightened up his neck.

They were all done with their travois. All that was left now was to turn around and go back in.

Just the thought of it was nauseating. 

He turned to look at the cave mouth. It’s dark entrance was like a cancer in the night, black and almost spreading out to the rock around it. Deep inside was the faint, flickering glow of a torch lit farther into the corridor, but that small, jaundice light only made the cave mouth look more alive. Like there was a pulsing, beating heart somewhere inside of it. 

Vesemir put a hand on Eskel’s shoulder, nearly startling him out of his skin. 

“Come on,” he said quietly, his voice a little strained. His eyes were focused on the cave mouth, giving Eskel only the barest bit of attention. Every line of his body screamed with tension and he looked ghostly pale in the starlight. “It doesn’t matter how ugly it is.” Vesemir paused, and licked his lips. “We go in, we do what needs to be done, and get out.” 

Then he straightened, adjusted the handle end of his sled, and headed back in.

For a moment, all Eskel could do was stand in mild shock. He knew just how much a trip back into that cave would cost Vesemir, just as he knew how tenuous the old witcher’s hold on his sanity was at that moment. Surely Vesemir knew it as well. But he was ready to head back in regardless, heedless of the personal cost.

This was why people thought of witchers as utterly fearless, this dogged sense of bravery. A complicated mix of pride and respect welled up inside of Eskel. He’d always cared for and respected Vesemir. The man had been more of a father figure to him than anyone else in his life, and had always shown Eskel care and concern. 

Despite everything Eskel had seen tonight, all the painful memories and horrible truths that they’d uncovered, _this_ was the essence of what he’d always strived to be as a witcher. 

He grabbed his travois and followed along after Vesemir, back into the dark. 

This time they knew exactly where they were going. The path was already lit by torches and with the nekker infestation wiped out, the cave corridors were eerily silent. Almost as if the cave walls themselves were waiting with baited breath.

Neither one of them spoke as they made their way back to far cavern. What Vesemir thought, Eskel had no idea, but to him it seemed like any spoken word would be too much. Too harsh. 

The foul smell of herbs was still chokingly thick in the air, but now they brought with them just a hint of the outdoors with them in the form evergreen branches, freshly cut. The fresh, green scent of them was enough to keep Eskel from outright squirming with nausea. Somehow, the stink of mutagens was even harder to walk though now that he knew what the smell was and what awaited them at the end. But that little bit of greenery kept him going without complaint. It reminded him that they were almost done.

When they got to the room of bones, they both immediately started filling up their sleds. No words were exchanged. They merely knelt down at the opposite sides of the room and transferred the bones. The remnants were too mixed up to even bother trying to assemble complete skeletons. Eskel tried not to think of how small the skulls were in his hands, of how short the bones when he set them on his sleds. He heard Vesemir moving behind him. Quietly, efficiently, and silent as a ghost. 

How long it took to transfer all of them, Eskel wasn’t sure. Maybe it was the dim light of the cave or just the task at hand, but time didn’t seem to have any meaning for them. They worked until they were done. Until every last bone was carefully stacked together, ready for transport. The curling pine branches kept everything piled up neatly, and they used the last of their twine to lash the bundles down. It took a little effort to pull the sleds through some of the rubble left in the cave, but they managed without a single word. 

By the time they hauled the sleds of the cave, Eskel felt dirty, both in body and in soul. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to scrub the feel of bone dust off of his skin. The sleds weren’t really heavy; the bones were dry and brittle, and barely added any weight except the sheer horror of them. 

The night was cold and clear outside, and the moon rose up high in the sky, looking down on where they stood at the cave mouth. It brightened everything around them until it was almost as clear as day. Just the barest breath of wind floated through the trees of the forest, sighing softly against a valley full of leaves and growing things. 

Eskel had to wonder if the boys whose bones were in his sled ever thought they’d see the sky again, let alone a night as peaceful as this. 

Almost against his will, he turned to look back at the cave. As they’d walked out, he had extinguished the torches behind them, so now not even a faint flicker of light could be seen in the cave depths. The bright beams of the moon shined down on the rock that made up the entranceway. After so many trips in and out, most of the vines had been well ripped off, leaving more of the rock bare than ever before. The opening looked much less like a fanged mouth now, and more like a broken gateway, with strong rock pillars on either side steepling together. Eskel could just barely make out the faint grooves of the wolf symbol on the side of the rock, there, and in the bright moonlight there was the faintest hint of a matching image on the other side of the entrance as well. 

“Wait,” he heard himself say quietly, calling out to Vesemir. 

Something about that cave entrance, open and unguarded, made Eskel’s neck crawl. Bodies or no, it was still an open cave with a great deal of lab equipment inside, as well as those gods awful tables. They’d never stopped to harvest the nekker bodies, but Eskel couldn’t bring himself to care even a tiny bit. 

He couldn’t change what happened in that cave but he could make sure that chapter of its story was closed forever.

Vesemir didn’t say anything, but Eskel could tell that he had the older witcher’s attention. 

“We should blow the cave,” Eskel said quietly, already digging through his pouch for his bombs. Words bubbled up in his mouth to explain the impulse away, to say how an open cave might attract more monsters. Or perhaps strangers might find what was left in there and try to loot it. But the sound caught in his throat.

Luckily, it seemed he didn’t need to explain. Vesemir just paused a moment and quietly said, “Alright.”

The easy acceptance was a huge relief. Eskel half worried that Vesemir would argue with him on it. 

Quickly, Eskel fished out a length of extra slow burning fuse and set up a few Dancing Star bombs along the cave mouth walls. He probably could have gotten away with only using one, but for this particular task he wanted to be extra sure. 

As soon as Vesemir saw him heading away from the cave, he picked up the handles of his sled and started moving. Eskel followed suit and soon the two of them were moving around the bend and along the thin overgrown path, eager to be out of the bomb’s blast range. 

After a minute of walking, the mountainside rumbled with a dull boom. That was quickly followed by the thundering sound of falling rock. A quick look behind them showed that a fair amount of the rock above the cave had come down. Some even spilled out past the bend in the trail towards where Eskel and Vesemir were still quickly retreating. 

Good. 

There was very little chance now of anything getting back there. Not without a hell of a lot of work, anyways. 

“I think the path leads down to the valley. It must have connected to the old watchtower road near the river crossing,” Vesemir said slowly. “I don’t remember much about the Trials, but I’m sure I walked under my own power. I don’t think I would have been able to climb.”

Since Eskel was himself dreading the thought of trying to safely move the sleds down the mountain side, he seized the idea gratefully. 

“Let’s give it a shot,” he said quietly. 

Vesemir nodded. 

“I’ll lead,” Vesemir said, turning to get ahead of Eskel. “I know those mountains better than anyone.”

That was nothing more than the bare truth. Eskel fell in behind Vesemir and the two of them made their slow, painful way down the overgrown trail. 

This high up on the mountain side, the trees were small, scrubby things. Silvery moonlight fell down on them through the branches and brought the faded track into sharp relief. Perhaps a human would have been lost in a matter of minutes, but a witcher’s senses were so keen that even a centuries faded path lit only by the night sky was as clear as day to follow. 

All around them were the quiet sounds of a calm night. It was too early in the year yet for insects calling, but the soft titter of nighttime birds floated occasionally through the light rustling of the trees. Those little sounds were enough that Eskel’s own heart didn’t seem quite so loud, and the steady drag of the sleds along the forest floor seemed to blend into the night. Every so often, the faint rattle of bones could be heard. Eerie, yes, but somehow fitting as well. It lent an almost otherworldly quality to the trip, an uncanniness that Eskel couldn’t quite pin down in his mind. 

Again, they moved in silence. 

The road wound along the mountain side, sloping very gently. They walked for a very long time before they reached the valley. Vesemir was right; the path emerged into the same place where the road to old watchtower curved out from the river crossing. The road leading to Kaer Morhen ran through the same crossing, only it was fairly well maintained and cleared, where the other roads were overgrown and mostly washed out by the winter thaws. 

Eskel couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. They were almost there. Almost done for the night. 

With their goal in sight, both Eskel and Vesemir walked with renewed purpose. The moon was brighter on the main road, and a few tiny lights from Kaer Morhen could been seen in the distance. It didn’t take long to pass through the Witcher’s Trail and get to the keep itself.

When they reached the middle of the bridge leading into Kaer Morhen’s courtyard, Vesemir paused just a moment to look out over the moat. The place where he’d dumped all of the bodies after Kaer Morhen’s destruction. A touch of anxiety rippled up Eskel’s back, but before he could say anything, Vesemir started moving again.

The moment they passed through the gate into Kaer Morhen, Eskel felt a wave of relief hit him. As broken as it was, and whatever history may have happened here, the keep was a safe place for Eskel. He was _thrilled_ to know that they were on friendly ground again.

They took the sleds directly to the back courtyard, letting them rest on the edge of the open space. 

“I’ll get the shovels,” Vesemir said.

But Eskel shook his head. “I’ll get them. And I’ll pick up a couple of swords, too. We need something to mark the grave. Wait here. We shouldn’t…” His mouth worked open and shut for a moment as he tried to find the right words. “They shouldn’t be left alone until this is done.”

“I won’t abandon them.” Vesemir’s voice was very soft. There was the unspoken words, the _not this time_ , but Eskel chose not to comment on them. He felt, deep in his heart, that they were doing right. They were fixing wrongs that were done a long time ago. They were doing the right thing.

Behind the great hall, in the room that led to the collapsed passage to the basement level, there was a makeshift armory. He found the shovels there as well as a selection of steel and silver swords. Not the highest quality, all of them basically common items, but in good condition. He wanted to put them on the boys’ grave. Tomorrow, after he rested, he would carve a tablet to tell their story. They would not be nameless or forgotten anymore.

When he got back to the back courtyard, loaded with swords and shovels, he saw Vesemir standing with his head bowed between the two sleds. He looked older then, his shoulders hunched down. But at the same time, there was something calmer about him; the jittery energy that disturbed Eskel before was dampened. Not gone, but no longer spilling out of Vesemir like a brawl waiting to happen.

“Ready?” Eskel asked quietly, coming to stand shoulder to shoulder with his teacher.

“Yes.” Vesemir nodded. He pointed to the patch of ground in front of them, outlining a large rectangle on the ground. “We should dig from there to there. That should fit.” 

Eskel noted that the space indicated left a fair portion of the courtyard untouched. For a moment, he had to wonder if maybe this whole endeavor had given Vesemir other ideas for the remaining space. 

Since he couldn’t see any reason to object, he nodded and grabbed his shovel. 

The work went quickly. Both Vesemir and Eskel were strong, very strong, and even a day and a half worth of climbing and fighting wasn’t enough to tire a witcher out. As they dug into the hard packed earth, the moon followed their progress, peaking in the sky and then slowly beginning to descend off into the west. As far as Eskel could figure, they’d have just enough good, strong light to finish their task.

Even though there was nothing really back in this patch of land but old grass, the ground was nearly pounded into place. They were lucky that spring rains had left it at least a little workable. If they’d had to dig this kind of a hole in high summer, the ground would be nearly like stone. Even now they had to use the sharp points of the shovel blade to cut into the ground, using sheer strength to break the earth up. 

It was hard work, but meditative almost. Shovelful after shovelful, the scraggy, half dead grass was ripped up and the soil was moved. Sweat trickled down Eskel’s back and made his hair stick to his forehead. The dirt kicked up from the digging smeared in with the dust from the cave left on his skin. Eskel wasn’t sure which he felt more filthy from. The earth they were rapidly tossing into a large pile was certainly more visibly messy, smearing on his hands and probably on his face too. But somehow the fine particles of mutagen herbs and bone dust seemed far worse.

Soon, any thoughts on the matter fled under the sheer repetitiveness of the work. Drop the shovel point down, cut into the earth. Pry it back and forth a bit. Pull it out. Scoop. Heave the dirt out of the hole. Repeat. Over and over. 

Eskel had gotten so lost in the work that it was a bit of a shock when they actually finished.

When they’d gotten the grave a little more than waist deep, they tossed up their shovels and started to carefully move the bones down into the ground. Eskel stood near the sleds and handed the bones down to Vesemir, who settled them into the ground as neatly as he could. 

There were so many bones to move, and with each one Eskel marveled again at how small they were. It was astonishing and painful at the same time. He handled them with as much care as he could, and from the gentle, precise way that Vesemir laid them out on the earth it was clear that he was being just as careful. The palisade of long bones laid neatly side by side felt like something that Eskel would be dreaming of for months to come. The small skulls framing the outside edges of the grave were just as uncomfortable. They filled in the smaller bones into the space in between, trying not to look at how tiny they were, how fragile. 

That task, too, went quickly, and before Eskel knew it, it was time to bury them.

It was strange, seeing those bleached little bones slowly covered by dark earth. There was silence between him and Vesemir. No words would pass his throat; something inside him railing against making noise. There was something meditative, almost transcendent in the silence, like a thousand souls were watching them. It was in the noiselessness of this night, the flickering light of the two torches Vesemir set into the ground on both sides of the grave, and the cold light of the stars. His chest felt tight, but in a better way than in cave. It was no longer horror and disgust twisting him up inside, but emotion and maybe even relief. Whatever shadows had haunted them in the cave seemed benign out here in the courtyard. Still and quiet. Even the night birds had long since fled to their rest, and the only sounds were those of dirt softly raining down on the remains.

Shoveling dirt into a grave was a hell of a lot easier than digging it out, and they were finished far sooner than Eskel expected. Or maybe he’d just gotten lost in the work again, his mind blank while his body was active with the task.

When the last of the soil was piled up on the fresh grave, Vesemir fetched the extra swords that Eskel had brought out. He shoved them down into the earth next to the piled over mound of earth, so deeply that only a few inches of the blades shone in the now waning moonlight. The blades stood with their hilts next to each other, the same as a witcher wore them on his back.

“Rest in peace,” Vesemir murmured, his voice so soft that Eskel barely heard it.

Eskel felt the goosebumps raise up on the back of his neck; a shiver of unease that made his hand itch for his sword. He jerked his head, scanning their surroundings rapidly for any danger. It took him surprisingly long time to notice the patch of darker shadows under the keep’s wall, near the side entrance that Eskel used before. 

In that deep shadow, so still Eskel’s eyes almost slid over him, stood Dracula. His eyes were a banked red that was almost lost in the dark shadows, his black hair and red coat oddly hard to see. Only the gold edges of his armored coat caught the barest hints of light.

He stood there, motionless and unreadable, watching them finish the burial. Eskel wondered when he got here. Had he just shown up, or was he there the whole time and only now letting himself be seen? 

Eskel couldn’t understand how Geralt could stand to be close to that kind of power for long. There was such a vast well of it, unending and alive. Curious, even. Its tendrils stretched out, touched and wrapped around things constantly. Even now Eskel could feel Dracula from where he stood, the ebb and pulse of his power. The very quality of darkness around them changed with his presence. 

Vesemir didn’t even seem to notice that they’d acquired a spectator. He simply knelt next to the swords that marked the grave, and closed his eyes. 

“You can go, if you want,” Vesemir said quietly. For a moment, Eskel had to wonder who he was talking to, him or the bones. “I’ll keep watch until dawn.”

For a moment, Eskel stood there in indecision. He felt Dracula’s eyes on them, and his neck prickled in disquiet. 

But he also felt a sense of...waiting, almost. Like something was yet unfinished. As a witcher, he was well knowledgeable about all the many ways to settled a disquiet ghost or spirit. So far he hadn’t been able to detect any such thing about these remains...but it didn’t hurt to be cautious. 

The dead wanted to be remembered. To be _mourned_. 

Not only that, but Eskel couldn’t bring himself to leave Vesemir alone like this. Not now.

He shook his head and knelt on the grass next to where Vesemir sat. 

“I’ll stay,” Eskel said quietly. Now that they were out in the fresh open air and the remains were safely in the dirt, Eskel hoped that whatever terrible thoughts plagued Vesemir would pass. 

Vesemir hummed an acknowledgement very quietly, so soft that it was barely an exhale. Then his breathing slowed and his heartbeat followed suit. He’d put himself into deep meditation.

 _Appropriate_ , Eskel thought. 

Hopefully the meditation would do Vesemir some good. Help organize his thoughts and remind him of the present and future. It was a fitting memorial for witchers, too, given how important the quiet contemplation was for them. 

Eskel took a long breath and slowed his heart and his mind.

Deep, measured breaths followed ponderous heartbeats. The world melted away for a while. Eskel concentrated on his body, feeling how every part of it connected. He was present with each sensation, focused but unthinking. All the little aches and pains from a full day and night of climbing and fighting, hauling and digging, fell away in the accelerated healing of that trance. 

When he felt the gentle warmth on his face, Eskel was roused from his meditative state. He blinked, squinting, his pupils feeling tight as they narrowed rapidly. 

It was the morning sun, warm and bright, just peeking over the mountains to the east, cutting bravely through the deep shadows of the mountainsides. 

In the early morning light, the courtyard around them looked strangely ordinary. The old stone, weathered and cracked, was almost bleached white, and the fissures at the base of the walls were colonized by scraggly plants fighting valiantly for survival. It was quietly, blatantly prosaic. There wasn’t even a hint of the uncanny about any of it, unlike the haunting atmosphere of the cave last night. There was no longer any feel of unfinished business or horrified waiting. 

Perhaps there really had been ghosts that needed settling. He hadn’t thought so last night, but it was hard to parse out what was simply his own deep horror at the situation and what might have been an outside force.

The swords he stuck into the fresh mound of the grave caught the light and reflected it, bringing home the reality of what happened, of what he learned.

All of those children, just tossed aside. Discarded like trash. He wanted to be shocked at the treatment, but all Eskel felt was a dismayed, bitter resignation. He felt dirty, inside and out, and exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with sleep. He’d thought that his school would have treated their own dead better than this, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised that they hadn’t. Disappointed, yes, and disgusted too. But not terribly surprised. Even though witchers ostensibly fought to protect humanity, they were sellswords, through and through. Ruthless and merciless, and that attitude was reflected in their teachers.

Then again, Vesemir had been surprised too, and he was a teacher. 

A quick glance to his side showed that Vesemir was blinking awake now as well. Eskel was profoundly relieved to see that he looked more himself now. His body was loose and his gaze was clear, if a little tired looking. 

Vesemir glanced over to him, and his lips pulled into a weary, little half smile. 

“Just a quick trip up the mountain, huh?” he said dryly. 

Whatever irritation Eskel felt for Vesemir already giving him shit was completely wiped away by relief that the old witcher was feeling well enough to poke fun. That was one less thing for Eskel to worry about.

That didn’t mean that Eskel would let him get away with it without a gripe. 

“Yeah, fuck you too. You’re the one who sent me out for flowers to begin with,” Eskel grumbled, trying to keep the tone light. Gods, but his skin was crawling with dirt and the scent of blood, bodies, and mutagens. He shuddered a little and stood up. 

“Which reminds me, we are still out of herbs. Your haul was rather pitiful.” Vesemir sounded sour, like a particularly displeased teacher.

Then Eskel let out a long _arrrrrgh_ , and ran a dirty hand through his hair. He didn’t even care anymore about not smudging himself further; that was a lost cause. 

“I will get you the damn flowers,” he griped, “but not today. I don’t feel like going out into the mountains again.”

Vesemir sobered a little and nodded, then stood up as well. “I might need to expand the gardens here. Especially if we continue to have more company.”

“Not a bad plan. We can figure something out this afternoon, if you want.” Eskel shivered again when a whiff of bones and herbs wafted up off of his armor. “I’m gonna get cleaned up.”

“Go on. I’ll take care of the shovels and the branches here.” Vesemir waved a hand at their roughly fashioned sleds. 

Eskel just nodded, and made his way inside towards the bath.

It was right about then that he realized that Dracula was nowhere in sight. Maybe he lost interest and left?

\--

When Vesemir put away the shovels, he grabbed a machete. Then he went over to the sleds and started hacking them to bits. 

He probably could have just left them as they were, or maybe just cut off the twine and made a pile of the branches. But the act of destroying the little structures was both soothing and distracting. 

Thoughts spun through his head, twisting and turning back again. 

The previous night was a bit of a blur. Details of the cave and whatever it was they did inside were lost in a jumble of memories about his own Trials and the destruction of Kaer Morhen. There were parts that stood out. The cave entrance and the first nekker fight. His hands trailing across the metal of the lab tables. There were flashes of the bones. So many bones. And the _smell_. Gods, but that smell would haunt him forever, he was sure. 

The trip back up to the keep was clearer, as was the burial that followed. Vesemir hoped that he hadn’t acted too oddly while he was out of sorts. He worried about Eskel seeing him so unsettled, but his anxiety there was fleeting. Eskel knew him well, and wouldn’t be offended if he was a little terse or melancholy. It helped that Eskel seemed unaware of any issues; he’d acted the same as always, steady and calm. That was a great relief.

What was surprising was how the sight of the grave eased something deep and painful in Vesemir’s chest, some leftover ache that was tied to the loss of his school and his own unpleasant childhood. The hurt was still there, but it wasn’t some festering, forgotten wound. 

It was agony to bury these children’s bones, to know that no one had looked after them for so long. But it felt good to be able to do something about it. There was a measure of peace in those actions.

Vesemir found himself resolving to search the depths of Kaer Morhen once again, even though his mind shed away from the thought of it. If this is what happened to the trainees of his generation, he couldn’t leave what had happened to future generations up to chance and the whim of his long dead colleagues any more. It was his responsibility as a teacher to do what needed to be done. To take care of his brothers and children, living and the dead.

Perhaps not for a little while, though. As loath as he was to admit it even to himself, Vesemir still felt shaky after the previous night. Taking a little time to do mundane things around the keep and steady out seemed like the best course of action.

Those scrolls he’d taken from the cave, the one’s still burning a hole in his pouch, featured strongly in his thoughts as well. 

It was possible they were just recipes. Or more notes on the Trials. But simple alchemical recipes weren’t usually stored so formally. They’d be in a book, like that ledger of names, or in a pile of loose paper. Not carefully settled in wooden tubes and sealed with a witcher’s personal symbol. 

A terrifying, trembling thought whispered into his mind.

They could be the secrets of the mutagens. It would make sense. Those were recipes worthy of such careful preservation. All of the witchers in charge of the trials no doubt knew the recipes by heart; witchers were very good at memorization after all. But they’d no doubt try to preserve the newest, most successful version of the mutagens on paper. Just in case. 

If this is what Vesemir had in his possession now…

He’d be able to restart the school. 

The keep was a ruin, sure, and there were only a bare handful of Wolf witchers left, true. But that would be enough to get started. Even if it was just him as a lone instructor, he could handle a group of ten or so boys. Teach them all the basics, and then possibly pull in the rest of the Wolf witchers to help with more advanced skills. 

Their school could live again. They’d have more brothers in training, more witchers to help them rebuild and spread out onto the Path. It would be slow, achingly slow going, and they wouldn’t see solid results for decades. 

But the Wolf school would _live_. 

Perhaps even prosper. 

As terribly hopeful as that idea was, Vesemir could not stop thinking about that pitiful pile of bones that they’d just buried, sad, discarded, and unwanted. 

If he tried to restart the school, he would have to administer the Trials. Personally. Even if he wasn’t the only one left to do so, this would be a job he wouldn’t ever assign to anyone else. He’d take the responsibility. 

He’d have to go trolling for young orphans. Years ago people left unwanted children on the keep doorstep. It was generally acknowledged that witchers would take young boy children and find a use for them. Now that it was well known that the keep was destroyed, he’d have to go out and find children that no one else wanted. He’d have to raise them, train them, care for them.

And then watch most of them die screaming as he pumped their bodies full of the mutagen cocktail.

He would be the one with a pile of dead children, waiting to be buried. Or burned. Or discarded. 

He would also lose Geralt and Lambert, he realized. Eskel probably too. Lambert would be the most dangerous. At best he would storm out to never return, at worst he would turn violent.

Geralt…he was the hardest to figure out. He wasn’t as bitterly angry as Lambert, but his sense of right and wrong was truly unbecoming for a witcher. In that respect he failed more than any other witcher that came of the Wolf School. He didn’t even seem to understand the meaning of ‘ _don’t get involved_ ’, much less adhere to it. He might leave or he might decide to burn down the school; it was hard to say. Harder now with the kind of power he tied himself to. One thing Vesemir knew for sure, Geralt wouldn’t stay to watch the boys going through the Trials. 

Would it truly be worth it?

Vesemir had to wonder.

On one hand, the Wolf school would live. There would be more witchers eventually, and the keep would slowly get repaired. There would be brothers coming home for the winter again and they would be ready to kill the monsters of the world as needed. The loneliness and despair of the end of their line would be a moot point. 

On the other hand, Vesemir would lose his boys, his only real family now. And all of the horrible things that he’d seen and remembered last night would continue on, this time with _his_ hand in control. All the needless, wasteful death. The pain brought on those who least deserved it. 

And though Vesemir hated to admit it, he was not a young man anymore. Witchers could live for an exceptionally long time, but restarting the Wolf school was a task that would take centuries more to really be counted as a success. The odds were very good that Vesemir might end up leaving this job unfinished. Especially if Geralt, Lambert, and Eskel turned away from him for good. 

He thought long and hard about the consequences of such a choice. As he cut through the pine branches and sapling frame of the sled, he thought about needing to handle even more children's bodies. More and more as the years went on, and all dead by his hand. 

Vesemir considered himself appropriately callous, as a witcher should be. But the very thought of this turned his stomach. 

While he knew without a doubt that he _could_ do it, he wasn’t sure if he could live with himself afterwards. 

The decision was a heavy one, with only bad options on either side. 

Acknowledge the final death of the Wolf school, or become a monster he himself didn’t recognize any longer?

He piled up the newly made kindling along with the rest of the stock of firewood. Once it was dried out, it could be put to use. Or just burned for the sake of burning it. He hadn’t decided yet. 

Then he made his way to the baths. Eskel had already been and gone, so Vesemir was able to clean up in peace. Still, he made short work of it. He’d no desire to linger in public places. He had a moment of incredulity at how the baths became a public space now, how any part of the keep was public where it used to be just his alone for most of the year.

When he made it to his room, there was already a small, cheerful fire burning in his fireplace. The work of the succubi that had started frequenting the keep, he was sure. As much as the invasion of privacy was an annoyance, he was at least a little relieved at the convenience. 

Vesemir sat down heavily in a chair directly in front of the blaze, and took the three little scroll tubes out of his pouch. He ran his thumb over one, smearing off more dust and leaving a grey smudge on his finger. It wasn’t just age that stained this container, but deadly poison and powdered corpses. A tangible reminder of the cost of what lay inside those wooden tubes. 

He should look in them. Break open those seals and see for sure if rebuilding the Wolf school was even a possibility. 

But...all that death. Not just the children, though that weighed heavily on his mind, but the deaths of everyone when Kaer Morhen had come under attack too. Peasants had gathered, fed on propaganda and rumor, they’d come to wipe out witchers because they thought them terrifying, immoral monsters. 

Most of what they’d been fed was bullshit, absolute and utter bullshit. But here Vesemir was, contemplating the eventual torture and death of generations of children. All so a select few could gain the strength needed to walk the Path. 

There were monsters in the world, yes, but there were more humans than ever. There were armies and weapons that did not exist a hundred years ago. As much as he loathed it, the Order of the Flaming Rose proved that even people who knew nothing about monsters could slay them successfully if they had large enough numbers on their side.

There was also the fact that Vesemir had continued to teach the rare unenhanced student over the years. Ciri was one, though she went more sorceress than witcher. Leo was another, despite his untimely end. It was possible, perhaps, that the witcher legacy could continue on even without the enhancements.

He pursed his lips, his mind spinning with it all.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Vesemir?” a woman’s voice called. One of the succubi, though Vesemir hadn’t caught her name yet. “May I come in?”

He looked at the door, then looked down at the scroll tubes in his hand. 

Vesemir stood up and shook his head. 

Then he walked over to the fire and tossed the scrolls in. They burned like they’d been soaked in oil, and within moments there was almost nothing left.

He knew what was more important to him these days. 

Quickly, he grabbed a cloth from the washing basin in the corner and wiped the dust off of his hands. Then he went to the door.

Sure enough, a beautiful succubus was standing there, her hair burnished gold, with a lovely curling rack of horns sprouting from the top of her skull to wrap down the side of her head. She wore only a pale, silk shift that lovingly hugged every curve, and in her hands was a heavy pitcher of what smelled like mulled wine.

A wide, happy smile split her face when he came into view. 

“Master witcher,” she cooed, and slid into his space not accidentally putting herself on the inside of the doorway. “Let me keep you company this morning.”

He had to laugh a little. He’d turned down every offer for sex from the succubi so far, and he had no intentions of doing anything differently.

“No thank you, though I appreciate the offer,” Vesemir said as politely as he could. No sense in antagonizing what was probably a powerful demon. Even if he was still a little nonplussed that there were now demons roaming Kaer Morhen’s halls. 

“I could make you feel so good,” she purred, eeling deeper into the room. Objectively, Vesemir had to admit she was very smooth about making sure he couldn't kick her out without a struggle.

“Again, the thought is appreciated, but unnecessary.”

She made a little moue of disappointment at him, but didn’t seem offended.

She did not head for the door, though. Instead she stepped even deeper into the room, heading for the old table he had beside the fireplace. Then she placed the pitcher on it and looked around.

“Do you have any cups?” she asked, tossing her golden hair over her shoulder. 

“If I said no?” Vesemir asked, closing the door before the draft sucked all the warmth out of his room.

She looked at him from the corner of her eye, smiling wryly. “Then I guess we will be drinking straight from the pitcher.”

Vesemir sighed.

“You are not going to leave anytime soon are you?”

She shook her head.

“Master sent me here to keep you company.” The implied ‘ _I will kill you sooner than I disobey my orders_ ’ was loud and clear. Vesemir sighed again.

“I have cups,” he admitted, turning to walk up to the cabinet. The cups were old and clay, but still serviceable.

“Shame,” the succubus said. “Sharing the pitcher would have been almost like sharing a kiss.”

“If there’s no sex to happen, what do you plan to do?” he asked curiously.

She appropriated his chair and curled herself fetchingly into it. 

“I heard you witchers knew how to play cards.” She reached into her cleavage and pulled out a pack of gwent cards and wiggled the deck at him suggestively.

Vesemir had to laugh.

“So you knew I wouldn’t accept your offer?”

“No.” She blinked at him innocently. “I planned to play strip gwent, but I guess I can deal with just gwent.”

For lack of a second chair, Vesemir pulled up one of his storage trunks and settled on the other side of the small table. He carried his own pack with him at all times, an old habit.

Vesemir shook his head. As much as he was irritated at the forced company, some small part of him couldn't help but be relieved that he wouldn’t be left alone with his demons.

\---

Eskel turned onto his back, feeling achy and unsettled. It was cool in his bedroom, making the scars on his face tighten up, but he couldn’t muster up enough energy to get up and light the fire. He felt tired. Bone deep exhaustion dragging at him, but at the same time he couldn’t fall asleep.

Hell, he wasn’t even sure he wanted to. If he fell asleep, he might dream, and gods only knew what kind of horrors his mind might dig up right then. 

Even though he’d given himself a very thorough scrubbing in the bathing room, the phantom smell of the mutagens still hung in his nose. Or maybe just in his memory. He was damn careful to get every trace of it off of him, but he couldn’t help but think of the bitter sting on his nose and the faint nausea that came when he smelled them in the cave. 

He should probably just get up. Witchers didn’t need sleep like humans did, especially not if they spent time to meditate. But Eskel couldn’t drag himself off of the bed. All he could do was sit and stew on what had happened. What he saw.

Over and over, it was like his mind was stuck on repeat. All he could think was, _all those bones_. 

There were so many of them. 

Eskel had seen death. A great deal of it. Piles of bodies; human, nonhuman, and monster alike. But it was what those children’s bones represented that hurt the most. The very personal pain and suffering that he, and they, endured. The callous disregard afterwards. 

And to see Vesemir unravel like that was like a boot to the chest. He’d thought, _hoped_ really, that those days were over. The school was dead, the slaughter long past. What worse than that could happen?

He was going to have to tell Geralt and Lambert about this. 

Gods, but he was _not_ looking forward to that conversation. Lambert would be furious. Geralt...it was hard to tell. He needed to warn them though. Tell them how Vesemir had a bad episode again and what had caused it. They’d need to know what they might be walking in to if they spent any time here.

Though, once Eskel sat to think about it, perhaps Lambert wouldn’t be so angry after all. At least part of his fury over what happened to him and the other trainees was due to the disregard given to them. Maybe he might be relieved to see that something had been done. Some kind of reparation. 

Eskel glanced over to his window, well covered by dark, heavy curtains. It couldn’t be even mid morning yet. Probably not even properly breakfast time. He felt like he’d been laying in bed for an age already, but hardly any time at all had passed. And still, he didn’t want to move.

He didn’t want to think anymore. 

A tired sigh escaped him and he rubbed his eyes. It was still chilly in his room. He still hadn’t gotten up to go mess with a fire. For a moment he stared across the room, contemplating the stack of wood next to the fireplace. 

Then a cold, blue-white glow caught his attention. There was a bright spot spreading over his ceiling, slowly growing in size. The color of the light was familiar, cool and bright. 

He blinked at it. His mind was working sluggishly enough that he didn't immediately figure out what was happening. Decades of long habit had his hand already reaching above him to the headboard, pulling out the silver sword hung there in its harness. By the time he looked up again, sword in hand, the glowing spot was forming an ever growing drop and inside the drop he could almost make out a shape. A wolf, curled up in fetal position, slowly oozing out of the ceiling.

The more of it that form that came into sight, the more Eskel realized that it was huge. The size of a horse, nearly.

He shook his head, huffing a little. 

A giant, glowing spirit wolf? This had to be Alucard. Though what exactly was going on, Eskel wasn’t sure.

The ghostly wolf form gently fell down from the ceiling, still seeming to be curled up in sleep. When it hit the floor, it stopped and the form rippled. 

It twisted and glowed brighter for a moment, solidifying into Alucard’s human shape, making Eskel’s medallion vibrate briefly. The vampire was curled up inside a thick blanket, with only his face, a little bit of hair, and the ends of his fingers visible. 

Alucard blinked a little, and his face scrunched up in an incredibly sleepy pout. His hair was all in his eyes, strands everywhere as he slowly turned his head right, then left, and eventually settled on staring mournfully at Eskel’s bed, all of twelve inches away from him. He looked as if he really wanted into the bed, but the distance separating him from it was just too much, an insurmountable chasm making his dream impossible. He looked absolutely devastated.

Eskel rubbed his hand over his face and sheathed his sword. 

“Alucard,” he called out quietly, and shifted closer towards the edge of the bed. “You alright?” 

As far as he could see, Alucard looked absolutely and utterly stoned. Which did happen sometimes. The exact nature of _how_ that happened was still something of a mystery to Eskel, but he knew damn well that it had something to do with sex and possibly feeding. He wasn’t sure he ever wanted to ask for details on that, afraid of the overshare that would come with the answer.

Alucard didn't answer, but he turned wide and sad eyes at Eskel and made a small, hurt sound.

Well, _shit_. 

There was no way Eskel could not react to that. 

He slipped out from under his covers, hissing a little as his bare feet hit the cold floor, and went to his knees next to Alucard. Then he gently put a hand on Alucard’s jaw, tilting his head up so they were looking eye to eye. Maybe that would help get through to him in this state.

For fuck’s sake, where the hell was Geralt when he needed him.

Although, a tiny, traitorous part of Eskel was more than a little pleased to see Alucard. Every once in a while, Alucard had sought him out for cuddling, and every single time Eskel found himself grateful for the company. 

“Want me to find Dracula?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle and soothing. Eskel would pick Alucard up and haul him bodily over to Geralt’s room if he needed to. 

He was kind of hoping that Alucard wouldn’t want to go, though.

“Bed,” Alucard said quietly, after a long moment, as if that one word was enough to explain the mysteries of the world and possibly everything that was wrong with his life at the same time. “Not in,” he added sounding so damn sad Eskel didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Eskel looked at the twelve inches separating Alucard from the bed. 

“Bed. Alright,” he said, mostly to himself. He looked around for a moment, trying to figure out just how Alucard was situated under that blanket, if only so he could move him properly. “I’m gonna...I’m going to move you to the bed, alright?”

He honestly didn’t really expect much of an answer. Alucard just looked too damn stoned to focus on making words. His eyes were spacy and not tracking right, and he sat huddled in his blanket like a disgruntled, brooding bird. It was ridiculously adorable. 

Alucard looked at him as if Eskel said he was going to bring him sun and make a pendant out of it.

“Bed?” 

Eskel couldn’t help but snort softly in laughter at the amazement filling Alucard’s voice.

“Yeah, come on.” He wrapped one arm around Alucard’s shoulder, lifting him a little, and then swept the other under the rest of Alucard’s body, hoisting him up. Despite the soft appearance, Alucard was not a small man. It was a good thing Eskel was both enhanced and physically fit, otherwise this particular maneuver would be a hell of a lot more difficult. Even with his abilities, it was still a little awkward.

It was a little ridiculous how softly Alucard folded into his arms, tucking in his long limbs as if being held was the thing he wanted most in his life. He pushed his head under Eskel’s jaw and held on tightly.

“There you go,” Eskel said softly. Why, he had no idea. It just seemed to bubble out of him. “I’m gonna put you into the bed here.” He licked his lips, hesitant. This was still so new, this strange cuddling that sometimes happened between them. Eskel wasn’t sure what was allowed, what was welcome. “Should I stay with you? Or get Dracula?”

Alucard tightened his arms around Eskel and clung tighter.

“Eskel,” he breathed into Eskel’s neck.

A little shiver raced up Eskel’s spine, and he nodded. “Alright. Just...let me get you situated.” 

He laid Alucard down on the bed and tried to gently pry those tightly clinging hands off of him. “I just need to get you covered up with more blankets,” he said, trying to reach for his own quilts to add to the thick covering Alucard had wrapped around himself.

“No.” Alucard sounded grumpy. He tightened his arms even more around Eskel. “Eskel.”

Eskel stretched a little more against Alucard’s hold and managed to get the edge of his blankets in his hand. It was a good thing, too, because Alucard reeled him back in, dragging him close with an impressive amount of strength. For a moment, Eskel had almost forgotten that Alucard was a centuries old vampire. It was strange as hell to be moved like that, pulled in without a chance of resisting.

“Alright, alright,” he said soothingly, slipping his legs under the covers. He continued to try and situate them both together, covering them in his own blankets, though he didn’t try to breach Alucard’s blanket cocoon. 

This close together, Eskel could smell Alucard’s unique scent of frost and fur. Mixed in with that was the unmistakable scent of sex, though it wasn’t terribly strong. Given the stoned cuddling, Eskel kind of expected it. 

Finally, he got the blankets and pillows situated as he liked. Alucard was still wrapped up in his thick quilt, with Eskel next to him holding on and all of Eskel’s blankets draped over them. 

“There,” Eskel said with some satisfaction, gently chafing at Alucard’s arm. “Bed. It’s a little cold in here, but you should warm up under all the blankets.”

But Alucard still huffed a little in displeasure. He squirmed around, and then reached out from under his thick quilt, grabbing ahold of Eskel and pulling him in close. At the same time, he wrapped a leg around Eskel’s body as well, doing his best to twine them as closely as possible. 

Which was about the time Eskel realized that Alucard was _naked_ under that blanket. 

Panic raced through him and he froze, hands slightly uplifted, not sure if he was supposed to be touching or not. He had on a light sleep shirt and a pair of light sleeping pants, so it wasn’t like they were both naked. But still. There was a _damn_ lot of skin there. The scent of sex was stronger now too, and now the burning ember scent of Dracula’s power was noticeable too. Alucard snuggled up close, pressing them together at every point possible, and then nudged his head up under Eskel’s chin.

For a moment, all Eskel could think of was, _oh shit oh shit oh shit_. His heart pounded and he could feel himself start to react a little to all the touching, all the scents. It wasn’t that Eskel wanted to do anything sexual here. Quite the opposite, and he could tell from Alucard’s scent that he wasn’t interested in that either. But it was a little difficult to convince his body of that when someone was rubbing up against him, just the tiny little movements of someone settling comfortably into place.

For fuck’s sake, Eskel didn’t even _like_ men like that. 

He took a deep breath and mentally ordered his body to calm the fuck down. They were just hugging. That was all.

“You feel good,” Alucard murmured, turning boneless.

Soft, curling pleasure welled up inside of Eskel, and he felt himself melt. He finally relaxed a little, and pulled Alucard close, squeezing him tight for a moment. Then he pressed his nose into Alucard’s silver hair and breathed in, filling his nose with that frost and fur scent. It was wonderful to hold Alucard in his arms, to feel the way he melted into Eskel’s embrace. The way he clung so sweetly was like nothing Eskel had ever felt before. 

He ran a hand slowly up and down Alucard’s back, and pressed them closer still. Alucard was always a little cool, but wrapped up as they were under so many blankets, the warmth built up between them until it was very comfortable. 

This was always such an unexpected pleasure, to have someone to hold. To have someone holding him. He often wondered why Geralt and Dracula allowed this to go on, this quiet intimacy, but he was always grateful when it happened. It eased the aching loneliness in him.

“You don’t smell so sad anymore.” Alucard murmured, sounding half asleep.

“I just…” Eskel swallowed hard, and thought about the last day. The bones and the moving and the digging. The burial and the long vigil afterwards. He crushed Alucard a little tighter to him and pressed his nose into Alucard’s hair again. All of that was gone and done. They did what they needed to do, and now he could rest. “I had a long night,” he finished quietly. 

He let his grip loosen. No sense in crushing Alucard to the point of breathlessness, after all. Then he took one hand and carefully combed it through Alucard’s hair, scraping along the scalp. It was so soft, so smooth and pretty. He could understand why Geralt was so damn obsessed with it.

“You should have came up.” Alucard still sounded dreamy and sleepy. “I’m sure Father wouldn't mind if you wanted to cuddle.” 

Eskel huffed softly in laughter. “Alucard, your father is kind of terrifying.”

Alucard hummed, as if considering Eskel’s words seriously.

“I think he would have let you cuddle.”

 _Or he might have decided to eat me_ , Eskel thought with a small shiver. He still wasn’t quite sure how he’d managed to survive Dracula finding them all cuddling in the kitchen that first time. 

Though it was true that after that, Dracula did seem more...tolerant, was perhaps the right word. Not really kind, per se. Maybe indulgent. It was obvious that Alucard enjoyed giving Eskel a little attention now and again, and it was equally obvious that Dracula was willing to do a great deal to please his son. That left Eskel in a rather odd situation.

“He can always eat you later,” Alucard added reasonably, even going as far as making a tiny nod against his neck.

Another little shiver raced through Eskel’s body. Dracula was a vampire. A very old, very, _very_ powerful vampire. Alucard was no doubt being literal with the eating thing. 

“I think I’m gonna continue to hope he doesn’t,” Eskel said dryly, remembering the last time he’d been bitten by one of the lesser vampire types. He still had the scar. Then he paused, and rubbed his cheek on Alucard’s head. “But it’s nice to know you think he wouldn’t have minded.”

“He likes you,” Alucard murmured, then giggled. “You are so cute.”

There was no way that Eskel could crane his head around to look at Alucard, but his incredulity was so great that he couldn’t help but to try. 

“And warm.” Alucard wiggled that little bit closer and wrapped his limbs around Eskel even tighter. “Very nice to hold.”

“Cute,” Eskel said flatly. His face was a damn wreck and he knew it, half of it covered with terrible scars. The voice was worse. He sounded like he had a lifetime smoking habit and maybe liked to gargle with glass in his free time. “Likes me. How do you figure?” 

Alucard was the one to crane his neck up, pulling his face away from Eskel’s neck for the first time, and doing to his best to give Eskel an incredulous, half focused stare.

“You are alive,” he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then he sighed and burrowed under Eskel’s jaw again. “Cute,” he repeated. “Like a tiny kitten.”

While Eskel had to acknowledge that, yes, he was still alive and that probably was a good sign of Dracula’s favor, he was still a little nonplussed at being compared to a kitten. 

“A kitten,” he said, both amused and somewhat puzzled. He started up stroking Alucard’s hair again, making Alucard squirm a little closer in his embrace. The leg over Eskel’s hip tightened, and tangled them up more thoroughly together. Again, Eskel had to remind his body to behave. He focused on how warm and soft Alucard was. This wasn’t about sex. This was just about comfort, and Eskel was more desperate for that comfort than he wanted to admit. 

Alucard only hummed in confirmation.

As ridiculous as this was, with Alucard appearing in his room, stoned and looking for a cuddle, Eskel had to admit that it did change things. The unsettled feeling from before was mostly gone, replaced with bafflement and a curious sense of unexpected comfort. It wasn’t often that somebody embraced him just for comfort’s sake. People felt unsettled by witchers in general, and Eskel’s facial scarring meant that the reaction was usually more extreme. 

Now, with Alucard’s scent in his nose, the warmth of Alucard’s body so close to his, and the feel of limbs wrapped all around him, the horrors of the night before felt less sharp, less like something that would haunt his dreams. It was surprisingly hard to feel bad with such a soft and cuddly Alucard wrapped up around him.

The sat together quietly for a while, with Alucard’s nose against his throat. Eskel kept up the soft petting, relishing the feel of it as much as the fact that he was allowed to do so. He thought that Alucard must have fallen asleep, he was so still and warm in Eskel’s arms. 

Eskel found that he was content enough to just drift, absorbed in the sensations. Warm and covered up. 

“Thank you,” Eskel mumbled quietly. Even if Alucard was asleep, he wanted to say it. He was so relieved to not be alone after that miserable night. Words didn’t really seem enough, but they were something at least. 

Apparently Alucard wasn’t asleep after all, because he squeezed Eskel tight in response. Tight enough that Eskel made a little noise that he would deny to the end of his days. 

“ _Cute_ ,” Alucard muttered. He nosed into Eskel’s throat again, and then settled back into sleep.

Eskel felt like grumbling a little at that, but in the end he kept quiet. The cuddling was too good, too relaxing to disrupt. If he had to be compared to small, fluffy animals to get it, well, he could deal with that.

 

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS:
> 
> In this fic you will find a fair bit of action as Eskel and Vesemir kill some monsters while exploring a cave. They discover an old mass grave filled with children's bones, boys that Vesemir trained with when he was a child. There are _somewhat_ graphic memory flashbacks to the torturous Trials that witchers go through, where only 1 in 10 survive. Those Trial were agonizing, and they were done to children. There are also graphic flashbacks to the attack that destroyed Kaer Morhen, and the deaths that happened there.
> 
> All of this is told in the context of flashbacks with kind of a ghost story vibe. None of the violence to children happens at the hands of the main characters. There is a lot of discussion of the morality of allowing these actions to happen.
> 
> Take care of yourselves folks.


End file.
